Call it the billionaire boomerang: The ultrawealthy are turning on Trump over tariffs

• President Donald Trump's tariff policies have vaporized trillions of dollars from the stock market.
• Those most affected are huge stockholders like billionaires, many of whom once supported the president.
• They are now turning on him, as stocks are down close to 10% in April already.

Maybe the animal spirits need to be leashed.

The tariffs announced by President Donald Trump last week have tanked global stock markets, hitting the world's richest the hardest.

Billionaires, including big supporters of Trump, have seen their net worths and investment portfolios plummet during the market sell-off.

Hedge fund managers such as Third Point's Dan Loeb and Pershing Square's Bill Ackman have been critical of the tariffs, with Ackman pushing for a 90-day pause on X.

Months after saying that people who are worried about the economic impacts of tariffs should "get over it," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter published Monday that "America First is fine, as long as it doesn't end up being America alone," and warned that tariffs will slow the economy down.

Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, whom Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent worked under, posted on X in November that his former employee "is innovative in a calm, thoughtful way that will be disruptive but not rattle markets." On Sunday, as recession predictions became commonplace among economists, Druckenmiller made clear he differs from his former protégé, writing that he does not "support tariffs exceeding 10%."

A pair of Republican billionaires named Ken — Langone and Griffin, founders of Home Depot and Citadel, respectively — are frustrated with the rollout.

Langone told the Financial Times that he doesn't "understand the goddamn formula" used to create the specific rates for each country, while Griffin — whose vaunted flagship fund has lost money the last two months — called them a "huge policy mistake" in a talk at the University of Miami Monday night.

The reversal of opinion of the world's wealthiest is no shock. Former President Joe Biden, for example, enjoyed the support of big names in Wall Street and Silicon Valley before the relationship soured, thanks in part to the policies and focuses of former SEC chair Gary Gensler and former FTC chair Lina Khan.

Trump himself has veered between love and hate with the elite of his hometown during his decade in politics, with the most recent lull paling in comparison to how companies and donors fled from him following the January 6 insurrection attempt four years ago.

But this feels different because, according to six different investors trying (and mostly failing) to trade these markets, they're all powerless. A company's fundamentals do not matter now, only whatever comes out of Washington, which led to one trader "getting my face ripped off" by their short bet today.

This individual's bet backfired because the market briefly spiked at a false rumor of a reprieve from the tariffs. The White House denied any pause was coming, with Trump instead threatening even higher tariffs against China, which has shown no sign of yielding.

The Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, wrote on Sunday that "the more pressure we get, the stronger we become," and some investors are starting to bet on them over the US.

Speaking on "Liberation Day" at a conference put on by technology lobbying group Information Technology Industry Council, David McCormick, the junior senator from Pennsylvania and one-time CEO of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, said he has spoken to many in his old line of work who are "long China and short America."

Following the release of Chinese AI darling DeepSeek's models in January, McCormick, a Republican who is married to former Trump advisor and Goldman Sachs alum Dina Powell, said some of the so-called smart money is betting on the US losing the AI race — but he isn't.

"I'm long America, and I'm short China," he said, "but it depends on what we do. It's in our hands, and we can mess it up."

Emmalyse Brownstein contributed reporting.