In one of the more colorful objections to President Donald Trump’s glut of tariffs on Wednesday, financial pundit Ross Gerber called it a “disaster of idiocy.” (Watch the video below.)
Gerber, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, made his worrisome comments on CNN’s “Laura Coates Live.”
Coates played a clip of Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and John Kennedy (La.) expressing concern at Trump’s major escalation in his global trade war. His announcement of a 10% minimum tariff on all imports sent global markets tumbling. American consumers will likely feel the impact in higher costs for many items.
She turned to Gerber, who happens to be a major investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla, for his take. And while at times he seemed to search for a silver lining, the money wonk could only forecast gloom and doom.
“I don’t worry too much about tomorrow. I worry about the short, medium, and long term with these policies. So, tomorrow is just, you know, a little bit of appetizer for what could be horrendously worse because the U.S. markets are certainly not cheap by any standard, and we went from almost an ideal market environment over the last year or two to now complete and utter sort of destruction of the system of trade that we’ve had for a very long time, that has benefited America greatly with lower prices! That’s the whole reason that this is set up the way it is,” he said.
“But, you know, I was just thinking about it and I’ve studied this for over 30 years, and I want to try to, you know, reassure people that things are going to be OK,” Gerber added. “But, honestly, this is just a disaster of idiocy that I can’t even tell you beyond proportions.”
