Trump Adviser Calls ‘Nuclear Winter’ Talk ‘Completely Irresponsible’

Jeremy Frankel | April 07, 2025 9:00 PM

White House National Economic Council (NEC) Director Kevin Hassett said Monday that billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman should back away from the notion that tariffs imposed by President Trump could lead to a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.”

Hassett called it “completely irresponsible rhetoric” when speaking with Fox & Friends on Monday.

“I would urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” Hassett said.

Hassett said that most of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. has not been affected by Trump’s new tariffs. Imports only account for 14% of the GDP, “so 86 percent of GDP is affected by the deregulation and the tax cuts and everything else,” he added.

“Even if you think that there will be some negative effect from the trade side, that’s still a small share of GDP. And so the idea that it’s going to be a ‘nuclear winter,’ or something like that, is completely irresponsible rhetoric,” Hassett said, maintaining that he and others working in the White House believe that “these economic responses are exaggerated by critics.”

Ackman warned that tariffs could collapse the economy and hurt Trump’s supporters the most of all.

“This is not what we voted for,” Ackman wrote, arguing for Trump to instead consider calling a “90-day time out” to allow him to deal with “asymmetric tariff deals and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.”

However, if the U.S. launches an “economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” Ackman wrote. “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.”