Many economists, liberal and progressive as well as conservative and libertarian, are warning that President Donald Trump's steep new tariffs could help push the United States into a recession.

The liberal anti-tariffs voices include Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, while right-wing opponents of the tariffs often note the late Milton Friedman's warning that tariffs were terrible for both businesses and consumers.

During a Sunday, April 13 appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press," billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio noted that a recession is a very real possibility if Trump goes ahead with his tariffs. But Dalio, founder of the Wall Street firm Bridgewater Associates, emphasizes that the dangers posed by Trump's tariffs go way beyond a recession — and could lead to wars and military conflicts.

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"Right now," Dalio warned, "we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession. And I'm worried about something worse than a recession if this isn't handled well…. We are going from multilateralism, which is largely an American world order-type of thing, to a unilateral world order in which there’s great conflict."

Asked for more specifics, Dalio elaborated, "To be very specific, the value of money, internal conflict that is not the normal democracy as we know it, and international conflict in a way that is highly disruptive to the world economy and could even be a military conflict, just as these breakdowns have occurred before."

Dalio went on to cite some "big forces through history that drive everything." And they include: (1) the money-credit-debt economic cycle," (2) "internal conflict" because of "differences in wealth and values," and (3) the "great world order."

Dalio told NBC News, "So far, (the tariffs have been) very disruptive…. We have a new order that began in 1945, a new monetary order and a new geopolitical order. And these go in cycles that can be measured — and I worry about the breakdown of that kind of order."

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Watch the full video at this Daily Beast link (subscription required).


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