CNBC’s Jim Cramer went in on the Trump administration’s tariffs plan for “Liberation Day,” hitting the president with an insult that will be hard for him to come back from.
On Monday night’s Mad Money episode, Cramer noted how the market was “doing extremely well last year,” until the current administration came and “sowed the level of uncertainty” that he couldn’t recall since Jimmy Carter.
“I cannot think of another president in my lifetime who could knock down the stock market simply by opening his mouth than Jimmy Carter,” Cramer said. “Eureka! I have found him!”
Cramer said that the last time people were this worried about inflation and stagflation, which is a combination of elevated inflation and unemployment paired with stagnant growth, was during the Carter era.
“Back then, stagflation was real,” he said. “I know it’s a brutal comparison. You think I did it idly?”
Trump expressed his disdain for the former president at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February, stating that Carter “passed away a happy man” because Joe Biden “was the worst president in the history of our country.” Carter died in December 2024.
Cramer agreed with the sentiment BlackRock CEO Larry Fink expressed in his 2025 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors, which read, “I hear it from nearly every client, nearly every leader—nearly every person—I talk to: They’re more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory.”
Investors have been uneasy due to Trump’s recent “wrath,” with Cramer stating that the “one person who’s standing in the way of a great economy” is Trump himself.
“Everything about this economy is good. Everything, everything, except one thing. We have a president who’s very angry at everyone, except Vladimir Putin,” Cramer went on to say. “Oh, no, maybe even Vladimir Putin.”
This episode comes on the eve of Trump’s self-proclaimed “Liberation Day,” when his “reciprocal tariffs” plan is set to go into effect on Wednesday, Apr. 2.
There has been much unease and uncertainty surrounding the economic impact of another round of tariffs, particularly in regards to the effect it will have on inflation and the growth of economies.
This has caused chaos in the stock market as all three major indexes—the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500), the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq Composite—fell Monday morning, though S&P 500 and the Dow Jones readjusted by the afternoon.
Goldman Sachs economists now predict that there is a 35% chance of recession in the upcoming year, compared to an earlier 20% forecast.
An economist at Goldman Sachs, David Mericle, said that this prediction reflected “our lower growth forecast, falling confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain.”
But Cramer says that all hope is not yet lost.
“If Trump can lose the anger, drop the scowl, stop diminishing our friends and rivals while making common cause with our enemies, and generally start acting like he did in his first term, well, that would be huge for the stock market,” he said. “As far as the stock markets are concerned, though, we need less Jimmy Carter, more Ronald Reagan.”
“Bottom line, maybe Wednesday isn’t de-liberation day,” Cramer concluded. “It’s just the day when American investors may be finally liberated from the president’s not-so-pro-business attitude, once he gets the tariffs out of the way.”
