Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer on Trump tariffs: As Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good; but it creates opportunity to ...

Microsoft former CEO Steve Ballmer recently said that the new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump will have an effect on consumers, adding that investors will feel the pain, too. Speaking to CNBC on the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations, Ballmer said “As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good”, further adding that “It creates opportunity to be a serious, long-term player.” The panel interview also included Microsoft’s current CEO Satya Nadella and former CEO Bill Gates.
President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on over 90 countries last week. Those impacted include India, China and the European Union among others. Commenting on the new tariffs, Balmmer said “I took just enough economics in college — that tariffs are actually going to bring some turmoil”.
He further added: “I think that disruption is very hard on people, and so the decision to do something for which disruption was inevitable, that needs a lot of popular support, and nobody could game theorize exactly who is going to do what in response.”
“So, I think citizens really like stability a lot. And I hope people — individuals who will feel this, because people are feeling it, not just the stock market, people are going to feel it.”

Noting that the future is bright for computing, storage and intelligence, the former Microsoft CEO said that he will continue to be a Microsoft shareholder. “I’m not going to probably have 50 more years on the planet. But whatever minutes I have, I’m gonna be a large Microsoft shareholder,” he said.
As mentioned before, the panel also included Satya Nadella who reportedly said: “Fifty years from now, or 25 years from now, what is the one thing you can be guaranteed of, is the world needs more compute.”
“So I want to keep those two thoughts and then take one step at a time, and then whatever are the geopolitical or economic shifts, we’ll adjust to it,” Nadella added.