Hedge fund billionaire predicts 'no way' to avoid Trump's recession

President Donald Trump is doing a “very poor job” of handling the Iran war he started, one of the world’s most influential hedge fund managers claimed in a Tuesday interview — and it will quite likely cause a global recession.

Trump is not going to be able to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without a drastic escalation, multinational hedge fund Citadel LLC CEO Kenneth C. Griffin told Semafor in a Tuesday interview. “Let’s assume it’s shut down for the next six to 12 months,” Griffin explained at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. “The world’s going to end up in a recession. There’s no way to avoid that.”

Despite Trump claiming to have mastered the US-Iran relationship and the potential geopolitical fallout of a war prior to invading Iran in 2026, Griffin told Semafor that this does not appear to have manifested in consequences on the ground.

“This really is a very, very treacherous moment for the world economy as we navigate the consequences of trying to secure a lasting peace in the Middle East,” Griffin explained. He later pointed out that, while America pulled off its Venezuela coup d’etat with “incredible grace,” it appears to have had “undue confidence” about Iran and overall done “a very poor job of messaging to the world.”

He concluded, “The moral imperative for what has happened in Iran over the course of the last 50 days … we did not position this issue with the world through the right talking points, and nor did we bring our allies on board with us. And I think that was a mistake.”

Similar to Semafor, CNN also reported that Trump’s actions in Iran are pushing America to the brink of recession.

"Trump’s extraordinary blockade of the Strait of Hormuz this week shows the United States isn’t backing down just yet. But America’s significant new step adds substantial risk – to more than just the economy," CNN explained. "If it lasts, the blockade could inflict severe damage to both the Iranian and the US economies. It’s a kind of mutually assured economic pain that the United States, with its $31 trillion economy, is betting it can better withstand."

CNN added that because 1.8 million barrels of oil are currently blocked from the global market each day that the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, the overall price of oil will inevitably rise. Yet when AlterNet reached out to the White House last week about observations similar to these, two spokespeople replied to explain why these concerns were supposedly unfounded.

“President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgence," White House spokesman Kusha Desai told AlterNet. "As energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”

Desai’s colleague Taylor Rogers even claimed other nations were "looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda.”

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