{"id":10620,"date":"2025-04-11T11:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T11:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/10620\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T11:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T11:19:10","slug":"howard-marks-says-trump-tariffs-echo-brexits-fallout-warns-of-recession-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/10620\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard Marks says Trump tariffs echo Brexit\u2019s fallout, warns of recession risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran investor Howard Marks<\/a> has cautioned that U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s push for sweeping tariffs<\/a> could trigger serious economic fallout, likening the idea to the UK’s Brexit decision and warning that such protectionist measures could potentially spark economic dislocation, a recession<\/a> and a reversal of decades of prosperity.<\/p>\n

In his latest memo \u201cNobody Knows (Yet Again),\u201d the Oaktree Capital co-founder called Trump\u2019s 10% blanket tariff proposal a potential \u201cown goal\u201d \u2014 a self-inflicted policy blunder \u2014 and drew a direct comparison to the UK\u2019s departure from the European Union.<\/p>\n

“I consider the tariff developments thus far to be what soccer fans call an ‘own goal’ \u2013 a goal scored for the other side when a player accidentally puts the ball into his own team\u2019s net. In this way, they\u2019re highly analogous to Brexit, and we know how that turned out. Brexit cost the British mightily in terms of GDP, morale, and alliances, and it harmed their reputation for governance and stability. All of this damage was self-inflicted,” said Marks.<\/p>\n

His warning comes as markets reel from a volatile week sparked by escalating trade tensions. Trump’s tariff push \u2014 including a move to raise duties on Chinese imports to an effective rate of 145% \u2014 has drawn swift retaliation from Beijing and sent global investors scrambling.<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs now pegs the probability of a U.S. recession at 45%, as fears of a full-blown trade war have led to a broad selloff in equities and U.S. Treasuries. On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 3.5%, dragging the index roughly 15% below its February peak. Safe-haven gold hit record highs, while U.S. bond yields posted their sharpest weekly rise in decades.
\"ETLive Events
While Marks acknowledged the rationale behind Trump\u2019s tariff objectives \u2014 including efforts to \u201csupport U.S. manufacturing,\u201d \u201cencourage exports,\u201d \u201cdiscourage imports,\u201d \u201cshrink or eliminate our trade deficit,\u201d \u201cmake supply chains more secure through onshoring,\u201d and \u201cdeter unfair trade practices aimed at the U.S.\u201d \u2014 he questioned whether these goals are truly achievable. As he pointed out, \u201cthe U.S. is unlikely to ever buy less from other countries than they buy from us as long as the U.S. is bigger and more prosperous and thus has greater buying power.\u201dMarks also expressed skepticism about the feasibility of rebuilding American industrial capacity in the short term. \u201cI doubt there is a factory in the U.S. capable of producing flat screens for TVs or computers. It would take years to build enough capacity to satisfy a meaningful percentage of U.S. demand,\u201d he said, noting that even if tariffs successfully incentivize domestic production, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to absorb it quickly.He warned that the costs of such protectionist measures may be felt almost immediately, arguing that the push toward aggressive protectionism could \u201cbackfire\u201d and damage the economy far more than intended. \u201cThe economic consequences could be truly dire,\u201d Marks wrote, especially if tit-for-tat tariffs spiral into a broader trade war that undercuts consumer spending, corporate investment, and global cooperation.<\/p>\n

Drawing a parallel to Brexit, Marks suggested the long-term damage from the tariffs could mirror what the UK has endured since leaving the EU \u2014 slower growth, diminished investor confidence, and a weakened global standing. While he refrained from forecasting specific outcomes, Marks emphasized the deep uncertainty surrounding policy interventions of this kind. \u201cTruly nobody knows, and a lot of this memo will be about things we can\u2019t know for sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In closing, Marks stressed the complexity of the current environment and the limitations of prediction. \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as foreknowledge here, just complexity and uncertainty, and we must accept that as true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also read | Howard Marks on the future of investing: 6 Key takeaways for investors<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran investor Howard Marks has cautioned that U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s push for sweeping tariffs could trigger serious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,32,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,7340,7341,2794,3300,7343,479,7342,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-10620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-howard-marks","17":"tag-markets-news","18":"tag-recession","19":"tag-stock-market-news","20":"tag-tarde-war","21":"tag-tariffs","22":"tag-u-s-president-donald-trump","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114319062741680361","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}