CEOs Just Got A Lesson In How To Influence The White House

Admit when you’re wrong — and speak up. CEOs have, for the most part, been unwilling to speak out against Trump on practically any issue, fearing retribution. In this case, finance executives had to both publicly break with the president on tariffs, as well as eat some crow about theirprevious positions.   

In January at Davos, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said that people contesting tariffs should “get over it.” This week, he said a recession would be “their likely outcome.”  

At a conference less than a month after the election, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin said tariffs were “not even close to the biggest issue” and “small ball compared to the role that the world is looking to us for.” The Republican donor this week called the tariffs a “huge policy mistake” that would hurt the middle class.

Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman perhaps best encapsulated the collective “oopsie.” After Trump’s win, he’d said, “We’re stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration I’ve perhaps seen in my adult lifetime.” This week, he called the tariffs a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter” and posted something like a mea culpa, writing on X, “I don’t think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount. My bad.”

But tread carefully and dole out some praise.  Rather than go scorched earth in an appearance on Fox Business, Dimon defended the idea of some tariffs, saying it is “perfectly reasonable for someone to say trade was unfair.” But he also urged the president to give Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent time to negotiate deals. Trump made it clear that the bank boss had struck the right tone when he later called Dimon “very smart, and very genius financially.”

Ackman also made sure to pad the criticism. He wrote on X that he had “a lot of respect for our president and what he has accomplished so far” and that the “country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs,” but that the way he was going about it would destroy confidence in the US as a place to do business.

Speak on platforms where you know he’ll be listening. Trump is an avid consumer of television news and social media, so finance chiefs took to these mediums to speak to the president directly. Less prolific users joined Ackman on X, with billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, in a rare post, stressing that he does not believe in tariffs over 10%. Third Point’s Dan Loeb shared a piece from a think tank that laid out what he described as “the potential conceptual as well as practical errors that went into the announced tariff policy.”

On Monday, Dimon put out his influential letter to shareholders, in which he sounded the alarm about the brewing trade war. But he likely knew what would actually get through to Trump was his appearance on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo. Dimon and Trump haven’t had a substantive conversation for years, according to the Wall Street Journal, but the interview let him get his message across without any intermediaries.

Offer a way out, and let him take the credit.  Ackman provided an alternative plan that would allow Trump to save face. He suggested a “90-day pause to give the president time to carefully and strategically resolve our historically unfair global trading position.” Trump’s eventual announcement looked strikingly similar to that suggestion — despite Bessent insisting that it was Trump’s “strategy all along.” 

Ackman let Trump claim credit for the 90-day gambit, posting on X, “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.” The post led to a collective groan on social media, but it was more effective with Trump than an “I told you so.”

Flattery is not exactly a new strategy for getting what you want — especially when it comes to negotiating with the president. But it gets the job done.