MW Yes, Bill Ackman, this is exactly what you voted for

By Brett Arends

MAGA investors are now acting surprised. Who do they think they are kidding?

We could all use a good laugh right about now. So thank heavens for Trump-voting MAGA billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman.

Complaining loudly over the weekend that the man he supported for president was now threatening us all with a "a self-induced, economic nuclear winter," Ackman said: "This is not what we voted for."

To which the independent observer responds with two simple words: "Wait - what?"

The chaos of last week's "liberation day" tariff announcements and the financial mayhem that has followed is exactly what Ackman and 77 million Trump supporters voted for. If some of them didn't realize that at the time, that's on them. It just means that they didn't do their homework.

Hearing them blame everyone but themselves is pretty much the only funny thing about the current situation.

When Donald Trump doubles down on trade-war rhetoric and then goes golfing at his private club while the stock market collapses, people are simply getting what they chose last November - good and hard.

Last fall, before the election, Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, openly warned that a Trump administration might be greeted by a Liz Truss-style financial crisis.

And a few weeks later, just before the election, Trump's handpicked economic adviser and budget supremo Elon Musk issued even starker warnings, saying that a second Trump administration would "necessarily" bring about some "hardship" and a stock-market crash. We wrote about it right here.

Trump himself has often and repeatedly said how much he loves tariffs. "I am a Tariff Man," he tweeted years ago. "When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs."

At his Madison Square Garden rally last October, just before the election, Trump warned again that companies that make their products abroad "will pay a very stiff tariff when they send their products into the the United States."

Complaining that Trump is doing what he said he'd do is like jumping into the ocean fully clothed and then complaining that your clothes got wet.

All of this was widely reported at the time, including here at MarketWatch. So I'm curious to know what, exactly, Bill Ackman finds so surprising in the recent maelstrom. I emailed Ackman's Pershing Square hedge fund asking if they could explain. Alas, they refused to comment.

It's not just about the president's specific economic policies, either.

No one on Wall Street has any excuse if they are currently surprised to find Donald Trump associated, yet again, with a stock-market disaster.

We have also been writing for 10 years about Trump's long and checkered career of business disasters and stock-market losses.

We wrote about it in 2016, for instance.

If anyone was still in any doubt, they had only to read the stock prospectus issued last year in connection with Trump's own venture, Trump Media & Technology Group $(DJT)$.

"A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy," the prospectus warned. "A number of companies that had license agreements with President Trump have failed. ...The Trump Taj Mahal, which was built and owned by President Trump, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991. ...The Trump Plaza, the Trump Castle, and the Plaza Hotel, all owned by President Trump at the time, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992."

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, founded by Trump in 1995, "filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004," it continued. "Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., the new name given to Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts after its 2004 bankruptcy, declared bankruptcy in 2009."

Now, sounding like Captain Renault in "Casablanca," MAGA investors and billionaires like Bill Ackman are shocked - shocked! - to discover that Donald Trump is imposing stiff tariffs on imports, precipitating a financial crisis and shrugging his shoulders as ordinary investors lose their shirts. Who could have even imagined such a thing - apart from, say, somebody who actually bothered stepping outside their echo chamber once in a while?

This mayhem has been on its way likely for weeks. You could have seen the warning signs a month ago, and certainly more recently. If you took our advice, you may have minimized your stock-market losses - unless you were one of the readers who wrote in angrily that these warnings were "fake news." Presumably the latest numbers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA are also fake news.

-Brett Arends

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April 07, 2025 15:13 ET (19:13 GMT)

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