With more than two decades experience working in the finance industry, Sen. Paul Honig said Monday he was shocked to see the president follow through with policies economists everywhere predicted would inflict severe damage on markets across the world.
Markets continued to drop Monday after a stretch of losses that began last week when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs against nations around the globe. The damage was felt everywhere from the U.S., where ABC News reported the Dow experienced its worst week since the start of the COVID pandemic, to Asian and European markets, which suffered significant losses.
Honig, a Democrat with more than 20 years working as a finance professional for JPMorgan Chase and Prudential Securities, said comparable market downturns have historically been driven by factors beyond the president’s control.
“Presidents often get too much credit for market gains and too much blame for their declines, but this might be the first time I can recall where a U.S. President has single-handedly put markets around the world in a nosedive,” Honig said. “I’ve never seen a policy decision by the president cause such dramatic damage to investor confidence.”
The ongoing fallout of the tariffs have some of Trump’s staunchest allies urging him to reconsider. In a Sunday social media post, billionaire Trump-supporter Bill Ackman suggested that Trump should call a “time out” and fix his “unfair tariff system.”
“Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” Ackman wrote. “May cooler heads prevail.”
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, wrote Monday that the tariff issue should be resolved quickly or the repercussions could be long-lasting.
“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” Dimon wrote. “In the short run, I see this as one large additional straw on the camel’s back.”
