| A GREY SWAN PUBLICATION | Tuesday April 8, 2025 | Swan Dive — April 8, 2025 Fat Cats Howl from the Rubble From the desk of Addison Wiggin
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs comically detonated a trade doctrine that had stood for decades with placards meant to be read worldwide by kindergartners. Blanket tariffs — 10% across the board, with some countries, like China, taking a 54% hit. Steel, tech, pharma, semiconductors — nothing sacred.
What followed wasn’t panic, exactly. But it wasn’t calm either. You’re good as long as you didn’t get any of the bubble detritus on your clean clothes.
Now, the dust is beginning to settle. Markets, after their historic plunge, are twitching back to life. Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq futures rose through the night.
Traders are stepping out of the blast zone, blinking through the smoke, asking: Is it over? Or is this just the pause between charges? 🐱 Cats Howl from the Rubble And right on cue, the fat cats of the old financial order have begun to yowl. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s alpha banker, said in his annual letter that these tariffs — if unresolved — will slow growth and threaten equity valuations. His message: get this sorted, fast.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, added more gloom: “Most CEOs I talk to think the recession has already started.” He warned that the inflationary impact of tariffs will keep rates higher, longer. BlackRock has already downgraded U.S. equities.
Stanley Druckenmiller, ever the steely pragmatist, posted that he can’t back tariffs over 10%. Trump’s top-line number: 50%. That’s not disagreement. That’s rejection.
Even Bill Ackman — Trump’s occasional fanboy — said this week that we’re careening toward a “self-induced economic nuclear winter.” Yesterday, he tried to walk that back, saying America is resilient, but he was still warned: “We’re at a critical moment.” His public spat with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over alleged conflicts of interest only added more gasoline to the blaze. 🧢 Trump: “Be Courageous and Patient, Panican.” Trump, for his part, isn’t blinking. He’s urging Americans to be “courageous and patient,” brushing off Wall Street’s freak-out as performative weakness. Then, in classic fashion, he coined a new label: “Panican” — a party for “weak and stupid people.”
Ever the clown in his press conferences, Trump is dead serious.
This isn’t policy tinkering. It’s an ideological teardown. A hard pivot away from global interdependence back toward sovereignty, production, and leverage. Trump isn’t trying to reform the old trade regime — he’s trying to bury it under the rubble.
And as Machiavelli advised in The Prince 493 years ago: It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Seems relevant.
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🪙 Buffett Keeps Building Through all this, one man is up $11.5 billion in 2025. Warren Buffett. While everyone else is playing chicken with tariffs and volatility, he’s sipping cherry cola and letting compound interest do its thing. His net worth rose to $153.5 billion. Elon’s still ahead — but barely — and dropping. It’s not magic. It’s not AI. It’s boring, well-run businesses with pricing power and profits. 📉 Earnings Season: The Next Blast Zone Now comes earnings season. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and BlackRock report Friday. Analysts have cut S&P earnings growth from 11.1% in November to just 6.7%. Full-year projections have dropped from 12.5% to 9.4%. No one knows what CEOs will say. Nothing useful. Joe Gilbert at Integrity Asset Management summed it up: “We’ve gone from the fog of a trade war to the fog of the earnings outlook.”
So, what does an individual investor do?
You don’t panic sell. You don’t chase rallies, either. You don’t trust politicians — left, right, or center — to manage your portfolio.
You go back to basics. Cash flow. Balance sheets. Scarcity. Innovation that doesn’t depend on subsidies.
And you keep some powder dry because we’re not done. Markets may bounce. They usually do. But this dust isn’t just settling — it’s also revealing what’s built to last.
More on tariff Ripple Effect at noon.
Addison
P.S. If you’re a paid Grey Swan member, join me and Andrew for Grey Swan Live! this Thursday, April 10 at 11 AM ET.
Last week, we covered our overall asset allocation strategy. This week, we’ll walk through the model portfolio — what’s held up, what’s breaking down, and where the next opportunity lies. 15 of our 20 stocks are still in good shape. Our aggressive five? Up 100% in aggregate. We'll also talk trade, tech, and how to keep your capital safe in a world that’s being rewritten. As always, your cheerful reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)
How did we get here? Find out in these riveting reads: Demise of the Dollar, Financial Reckoning Day, and Empire of Debt — all three books are now available in their third post-pandemic editions. You might enjoy one or all three. 
(Or… simply pre-order Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed, now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites: Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million or Target.)
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