BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claims the U.S. is “very close” to entering a recession—if it isn’t in one already.
Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, the Wall Street titan said he was “petrified” of the issues currently facing the economy, which is in turmoil even after President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs.
“I think you’re going to see, across the board, just a slowdown until there’s more certainty. And we now have a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs—that means longer, more elevated uncertainty,” said Fink.
The BlackRock chief said he feels the markets are currently “underestimating” how high inflation could rise under the tariffs, which could jeopardize the United States’ role as a “global stabilizer”.
“You factor in all these other issues, it’s going to be quite additive. I read in a report that if you just take the tariffs and the cost of home building, the average new home could be up as much as 26 percent. We already have a housing affordability problem.”
He added: “This is not a pandemic. This is not a financial crisis. This is something that we’ve created. As I said, the United States post-World War II was a global stabilizer. We are now the global destabilizer.”
Earlier this week, Fink told an event at the Economic Club of New York that other CEOs think the U.S. is “probably in a recession.”
“One CEO specifically said the airline industry is a proverbial bird in a coal mine—canary in the coal mine—and I was told that the canary is sick already,” CNBC reports.
Yet despite his concerns, Fink says he believes “megatrends” such as AI, data centers and infrastructure will continue to persist, and that the U.S. economy was still in the process of reorienting itself towards new markets.
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