Apollo’s Rowan says trade war has made U.S. ‘merely exceptional’
The Apollo CEO struck a careful balancing act between siding with President Donald Trump, while urging the government to quell unrest.
Apollo Global Management Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan said the Trump administration “is not wrong” in the goals it’s seeking through tariffs, but that it risks slowing the economy if it doesn’t resolve uncertainty around trade.
“We are the freest-trading country in the world,” Rowan said Monday in a Bloomberg interview from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. “It is not clear to me that we have to be, or that we should allow allies and strategic competitors to inhibit our access to their markets.”
Rowan, Apollo CEO since 2021, was a top contender for Treasury secretary before the role was given to hedge fund manager Scott Bessent.
The Apollo CEO struck a careful balancing act between siding with President Donald Trump, while urging the government to quell unrest that has unsettled markets and business plans across the US.
“We likely will cause two quarters of negative growth if we in fact do not solve the uncertainty,” Rowan said.
The erratic nature of Trump’s tariff threats has taken a toll, according to Rowan.
“We have done damage to the US brand — the brand for stability, predictability, regularity,” Rowan said. “I see us moving from what was hyper-exceptionalism to merely exceptional.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
