Wall Street billionaires are not used to being on the outside looking in. But that is where they find themselves after President Trump ignored their appeals to call off his tariff plans which they fear could endanger the economy.
With the backdrop of rapidly mounting stock market losses, corporate titans have worked every angle — phone calls, social media and even a typically staid shareholder letter — to try to change Mr. Trump’s mind.
The day after the president announced his most sweeping round of tariffs last week, chief executives from major banks, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, had a private meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick organized by a lobbying group in Washington. But Mr. Lutnick was not persuaded to reverse course, three people briefed on the sit-down said.
Over the weekend, megadonors to Mr. Trump’s re-election effort tried a different tack, pleading their case in calls to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, people familiar with the calls said. Those efforts also came up empty.
By Monday, hedge fund billionaires — many of whom had been loud and proud boosters of Mr. Trump’s second term — were going public with their cries.
“The global economy is being taken down because of bad math,” the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman posted Monday morning on X. He added, “The President’s advisors need to acknowledge their error before April 9th and make a course correction before the President makes a big mistake.”
Others chimed in, calling for a stronger fight.
Andrew Hall, a billionaire oil trader who has been critical of Mr. Trump in the past, saluted Mr. Ackman on Instagram for being a Trump supporter who was speaking out about tariffs. “At least he is willing to reverse himself and call out this stupidity,” Mr. Hall said of Mr. Ackman. “Where are the other ‘financial titans’? Why aren’t they speaking up?”
A few are doing so, though more diplomatically and in dribbles.
Mr. Dimon, the JPMorgan chief, waded into the fray on Monday morning with an investor letter saying the tariffs could dampen consumer and investor sentiment and hamper economic growth.
Mr. Dimon, who was complimentary to a degree of tariffs in the days after Mr. Trump’s election, stopped short of warning of a severe downturn but said the turmoil was “causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.”
Laurence D. Fink, chairman of the investing colossus BlackRock, took a blunter tone during a lunchtime address on Monday at the Economic Club of New York, warning that “the economy is weakening as we speak.”
In his first public remarks on the tariffs, Mr. Fink also predicted that a wide group of consumers would feel the pain from tariffs, citing Barbie dolls as an item that could cost more.
“Most C.E.O.s I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,” he told the group.
The state of affairs has shocked financiers who enjoyed access to decision-making by presidents of both parties. It is particularly jarring because during Mr. Trump’s first term, he regularly hailed gains in the stock market as a measure of success.
“I am not sure Wall Street can change the president’s mind,” Robert Wolf, a former chairman of UBS Americas, said. “But hopefully his donors and Mar-a Lago friends are being frank with him on this flawed approach.”
For a brief moment on Monday morning, it looked as if Wall Street had gotten through to Mr. Trump. A report that he was planning to pause his tariffs caused the stock market to swing wildly from losses into positive territory.
But after the White House denied the report and Mr. Trump reiterated his commitment to the tariffs, the S&P 500 finished the day down another 0.2 percent. The index ended Monday almost 18 percent below its mid-February peak, teetering on the edge of a bear market.
A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said in a statement, “The Trump administration maintains regular contact with business leaders, industry groups and everyday Americans, especially about major policy decisions like President Trump’s reciprocal tariff action.
“The only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making, however,” Mr. Desai continued, “is the best interest of the American people — such as addressing the national emergency posed by our country running chronic trade deficits.”
The sell-off has been alarming on Wall Street because a stable market means that corporate deal-making can go forward, and that banks can lend to companies and consumers without fear of defaults.
With the market dropping at a pace not seen since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when everyday life ground to a halt, Wall Street executives have been scouring their clients and investments for signs of distress.
One major investment bank, according to a person with knowledge of its plans, was examining whether it would need to reduce the value of its billion-dollar loans to so-called investment-grade companies — ones typically considered safe bets — before its public earnings results. Banks are scheduled to begin reporting their latest results on Friday.
Another big conversation topic was the private market for loans, which has ballooned since the last major financial crisis in 2008 and typically involves financing risky companies. Private lenders have long argued that any stress to their system would be contained, but these firms have also never been faced with a contraction this size.
While the concerns of Wall Street power brokers can often seem removed from the concerns of average Americans, the arguments that finance executives are making to Mr. Trump have included how his trade policy threatens the economy, not just stocks.
The global financial crisis of 2008, which was set off by a drop in the value of esoteric mortgage bonds, led to a housing market collapse that lingered for years. Many American businesses rely on sales in countries that are threatening retaliatory tariffs.
When financiers have spoken to Trump administration officials in recent days, the response has been that the White House is focused on long-term job creation in industries, such as manufacturing, that have moved overseas. The market turmoil, Trump administration officials have said, may be a necessary temporary disruption to allow for longer-term change.
A prominent executive acting as an intermediary between Wall Street and Trump officials said he had begun telling colleagues and competitors to stop trying to persuade Mr. Trump to delay the tariffs and instead ask to whittle away at individual levies for industries that would find it practically impossible to quickly replace imported goods.
There are already signs that Wall Street has been humbled.
When some of the chief executives who met with Mr. Lutnick last week regrouped for a phone call three days later, the conversation centered not on how to sway Mr. Trump but on how to protect their banks from the decisions that he was evidently committed to carrying out, two people briefed on the discussion said.
On Tuesday morning, even Mr. Ackman was toning down his critique, writing in another X post that he was supportive of Mr. Trump’s plan to deploy tariffs to eliminate “unfair trading practices.” Mr. Ackman added that “doing so without giving time to make deals creates unnecessary harm.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
