Carlyle Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Harvey Schwartz said he expects increased market volatility in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on the biggest US trading partners.
“We should all buckle up a bit,” Schwartz said Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York.
As traders grapple with questions about how tariffs will affect prices across the economy, Schwartz warned that markets are potentially too fixated on data points that might not be able to bring clarity on the direction of policies.
The key question around whether the Trump administration is implementing a one-time tariff — or escalating a full-fledged trade war — remains to be seen, said Schwartz, 60.
A one-time tariff “is a one-time step up in price acceleration, but it’s not sustainably inflationary,” he said. “Trade wars are sustainably inflationary.”
The S&P 500 tumbled as much as 2% Tuesday, wiping out all of the benchmark’s gains since Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory.
“We just don’t know where the tariff discussions are going to go,” Schwartz said. “It’s too early.”
Data that Carlyle collects from its portfolio companies indicates that purchasing managers ramped up orders of goods in recent months in anticipation of tariffs, he said.
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