Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, speaks during an interview for an episode of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations,” in New York on Nov. 28, 2023.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said that America was heading toward a self-inflicted “economic nuclear winter” as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy rollout.
“By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner,” Ackman, who had endorsed Trump during the elections, wrote on social media platform X.
Trump’s latest tariffs, signed into effect Wednesday, set a 10% baseline levy on all imports, hitting over 180 countries and hammering global markets.
U.S. equities capped off a vicious week for investors last Friday, down 9.08%, according to data from FactSet, as Trump’s moves stoke fears of a global economic slowdown. J.P. Morgan lifted the odds for a U.S. and global recession to 60% by the end of the year, up from 40% previously.
“Business is a confidence game. The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe,” Ackman said.
“The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for,” the hedge fund manager said.
Trump has the opportunity to call for a timeout for any negotiations to resolve any “unfair” tariff deals.
“Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” he said.
In a separate tweet, Ackman also took potshots at U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “He profits when our economy implodes. It’s a bad idea to pick a Secretary of Commerce whose firm is levered long fixed income,” Ackman said, adding that it is an “irreconcilable conflict of interest.”
Higher German infrastructure spending will boost Europe’s economic growth in the coming years — but not enough to outweigh the expected drag from U.S. tariffs, according to Alfred Kammer, director of the European department at the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF last week cut its growth outlook for the euro area, also making downgrades for the U.S., U.K. and many Asian countries due to President Donald Trump’s volatile tariff policy.
The institution cut its euro area growth forecasts for each of the next two years by 0.2 percentage points, to 0.8% in 2025 and 1.2% in 2026.
“It’s the tariffs and the trade tensions which weigh on the outlook rather than the positive effects on the fiscal side,” Kammer told CNBC’s Carolin Roth in an interview at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings last week.
“What we see is we have a meaningful downgrade for Europe advanced economies… and for the emerging euro area countries double as much over this two-year period.”
The negative impact of tariffs will be slightly offset by Germany’s recent infrastructure spending bill, which will boost growth in the euro area over those two years, Kammer said.
Exemptions passed to Germany’s longstanding debt rules have unlocked higher defense spending and enabled creation of a 500 billion euro ($548 billion) infrastructure and climate fund. The move has been described by economists as a potential “game changer” for the sluggish economy — the largest in the euro zone.
Several policymakers at the European Central Bank told CNBC last week that while the inflation path appeared positive — with tariffs potentially bringing inflation in the bloc down further — their broader outlook was now significantly more uncertain.
The IMF’s Kammer said that the ECB should only cut interest rates once more this year, by a quarter percentage point, despite growth risks.
The ECB has so far reduced rates seven times in quarter-percentage-point increments, starting in June 2024. Its most recent move lower in April took the deposit facility, its key rate, to 2.25%.
“We have a very clear recommendation for the ECB. What we saw so far is a huge success in the disinflation effort and monetary policy has worked … so we are expecting to sustainably hit the 2% inflation target in the second half of 2025,” Kammer told CNBC.
“Our recommendation is there is room for one more 25-basis-point cut, in the summer, and then the ECB should hold that 2% policy rate unless major shocks hit and there is a need for recalibrating monetary policy,” he added.
Overnight index swap pricing on Monday pointed to market expectations for two more quarter-point cuts this year.
SIX ESTEEMED sommeliers sit silently behind a judging table. A waiter tops up their glasses one by one and they appraise the stuff: sniff, hold it to the light, sometimes swirl, sip, swish between cheeks, dump the extras and give it a score. But the liquid is no Zinfandel or Syrah. Instead the bon viveurs are tasting high-end waters.
Homemade barbecue pork chops. Katy Perry performs onstage during the Katy Perry The Lifetimes Tour 2025. A woman checks her receipt while exiting a store.
iStock| Theo Wargo | Hispanolistic | Getty Images
A few weeks ago, as Kiki Rough felt increasingly concerned about the state of the economy, she began thinking about previous periods of financial hardship.
Rough thought about the skills she learned about making groceries stretch during the tough times that accompanied past economic downturns. Facing similar feelings of uncertainty about the country’s financial future, she began making video guides to recipes from cookbooks published during previous recessions, depressions and wartimes.
The 28-year-old told followers that she is not a professional chef, but instead earned her stripes by learning to cook while on food stamps. From Rough’s yellow-and-black kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, she teaches viewers how to make cheap meals and at-home replacements for items like breakfast strudel or donuts. She often reminds people to replace ingredients with alternatives they already have in the pantry.
“I keep seeing this joke over and over in the comments: The old poors teaching the new poors,” Rough told CNBC. “We just need to share knowledge right now because everyone is scared, and learning is going to give people the security to navigate these situations.”
The self-employed consultant’s videos quickly found an audience on TikTok and Instagram. Between both platforms, she’s gained 350,000 followers and garnered about 21 million views on videos over the last month, by her count.
President Donald Trump’s announcement of broad and steep tariffs earlier in April has ratcheted up fears of the U.S. economy tipping into a recession in recent weeks. As Americans like Rough grow increasingly worried about the road ahead, they are harking back to the tips and tricks they employed to scrape by during dark financial chapters like the global financial crisis that exploded in 2008.
Google is predicting a spike in search volumes this month for terms related to the recession that came to define the late 2000s. Searches for the “Global Financial Crisis” are expected to hit levels not seen since 2010, while inquiries for the “Great Recession” are slated to be at their highest rate since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Porkchops, house parties and jungle juice
On TikTok, a gaggle of Millennials and Gen Xers has stepped into the roles of older siblings, offeringflashbacks and advice to younger people on how to pinch pennies. Some Gen Zers have put out calls to elders for insights on what a recession may feel like at this stage of life, having been too young to feel the full effects of the financial crisis.
“This is, potentially, at least on a large scale, the first time that millennials have been able to be the ‘experts’ on something,” said Scott Sills, a 33-year-old marketer in Louisiana. “We’re the experts on getting the rug pulled out from under us.”
Those doling out the advice are taking a trip down memory lane the to tail-end of the aughts. Cheap getaways to Florida were the norm instead of lush trips abroad. They had folders for receipts in case big-ticket purchases went on sale later. Business casual outfits were commonplace at social events because they couldn’t afford multiple styles of clothing.
Porkchops were a staple dinner given their relative affordability, leading one creator to declare that they “taste like” the Great Recession. They drank “jungle juice” at house parties, a concoction of various cheap liquors and mixers, instead of cocktails at bars.
“There’s things that I didn’t realize were ‘recession indicators’ the first time around that I thought were just the trends,” said M.A. Lakewood, a writer and professional fundraiser in upstate New York. “Now, you can see it coming from 10 miles away.”
Customers shop for produce at an H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 12, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
To be sure, some of the discourse has centered around how inflationary pressures have made a handful of these hacks defunct. Some content creators pointed out that the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 per hour since 2009 despite the cost of living skyrocketing.
Kimberly Casamento recently began a TikTok series walking viewers through recipes from a cookbook that was focused on affordable meals published in 2009. The New Jersey-based digital media manager said she’s found costs for what were then considered low-budget meals ballooning between about 100% and 150%. In addition to sharing the price changes, the 33-year-old gives viewers some tips on how to keep costs down.
“Every aspect of life is so expensive that it’s hard for anybody to survive,” Casamento said. “If you can cut the cost of your meal by $5, then that’s a win.”
‘A very human thing’
This type of communal knowledge-sharing is common during times of economic belt tightening, according to Megan Way, an associate professor at Babson College who studies family and intergenerational economics. While conversations about how to slash costs or to make meals stretch typically took place among neighbors in the late 2000s, Way said it makes sense that they would now play out in the digital square with the rise of social media.
“It’s a very human thing to reach out to others when things are feeling uncertain and try to gain on their experience,” Way said. “It can really make a difference for feeling like you’re moving forward a little prepared. One of the worst things for an economy is absolute fear.”
Read more CNBC analysis on culture and the economy
Way said that Americans are quick to look back to the Great Recession for a guide because that downturn was so shocking and widely felt. However, she said there’s key differences between that economic situation and what the U.S. is facing today, such as the absence of bad debt that sparked the housing market’s crash.
Still, she said there’s broad uncertainty felt today on several fronts — be it tied to the economy, geopolitics or domestic policy priorities like slashing the federal workforce or limiting immigration. That can reignite the feeling of unpredictability about what the future will bring that was paramount during the Great Recession, Way said.
In 2025, it’s clear that economic confidence among the average American is rapidly souring. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment recorded one of its worst readings in more than seven decades this month.
With that negative economic outlook comes rising stress. When Lukas Battle made a satirical TikTok about feeling like divorces were increasingly common around the time of the Great Recession, the 27-year-old’s comments were abuzz with people talking about their parents splitting recently. (Though divorce has been seen as a cultural hallmark of the financial crisis, data shows the rate actually declined during this period.)
“There’s a second round of divorces happening as we speak,” Battle said.
Cultural parallels
That’s one of several parallels social media users have drawn between the late aughts and today. When videos surfaced of a group dancing to Doechii’s hit song “Anxiety,” several commenters on X reported feeling déjà vu to when flashmob performances were common.
Disney‘s reboot of the animated show “Phineas and Ferb,” which originally premiered in the late 2000s, similarly put the era top of mind.
Lady Gaga performing at Coachella 2017
Getty Images | Christopher Polk
“Recession pop,” a phrase mainly referring to the subgenre of trendy music that dropped during the Global Financial Crisis, has caught a second wave over the past year as Americans contended with inflation and high interest rates.
In 2008, artists such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry regularly appeared on the music charts. Both Cyrus and Gaga have released new songs this year. Perry kicked off a world tour this week.
“It’s almost a permission to feel good, whether that’s through song or something,” said Sills, the marketer in Louisiana. “It’s not necessarily ignoring the problems that are here, but just maybe finding some sort of joy or fun in the midst of all of it.”