- Ray Dalio says the US is on the brink of civil war after federal agents killed a second protester.
- The billionaire said America is a "tinderbox" following the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
- Dalio urged President Donald Trump to back down before tensions escalate into further violence.
Ray Dalio says a second killing by immigration officers in Minneapolis this month has put America on the verge of civil war.
"The United States is now a tinderbox," the billionaire investor wrote in an essay published Monday on X.
He said the federal government's clash with authorities in Minnesota and other states is "bad and likely to get worse" after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti on Saturday. Renee Good was killed in a confrontation with ICE agents on January 7.
Dalio — the founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds — said that if President Donald Trump doesn't back down, it would "risk pushing us over the brink into a more clear civil war."
The US leader could prevent further escalation by appealing for peace, showing the justice system will deal with the shootings fairly, and reining in his immigration enforcement, Dalio said.
The path Trump chooses "will have huge implications for what comes next, including possibly lighting the tinderbox," he added.
Trump has pivoted to a more conciliatory tone since the weekend. In a Monday post on Truth Social, the president said he had a "very good call" with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the pair were on a "similar wavelength" on how to proceed with immigration enforcement in his state.
Dalio is one of scores of business leaders to speak out about the situation in Minneapolis. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian urged US leaders in a X post to "lead right now — deescalate," while philanthropist Melinda French Gates wrote on the platform that there's "nothing more American than exercising our rights and holding our government accountable."
Historic stakes
Dalio, the author of "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order," said the conflicts raging in the US today echo the decline of past superpowers. He said it was "like watching a movie that I have seen many times in history."
He drew a parallel to a passage from his book: "When broad-based discontent bubbles up and those in power allow it to grow, it can boil over to the point that when they try to put a lid on it, it explodes."
Dalio said on X that "people dying in the fighting" and "conflicts between the states and the central government over their relative powers" are two classic markers of the move into the "more violent civil war stage," which often heralds the collapse of the "monetary, domestic political, and international geopolitical orders."
The Wall Street titan and economic-history guru has been ringing the alarm on the crumbling of the current world order for several years now. In 2021, he pegged the probability of a US civil war within the next 10 years at 30%.
He has also decried the national debt of over $38 trillion, comparing it to an "aggressive cancer" and "being on a boat headed to rocks."
Dalio wrote on X that the US needs to exercise greater "financial discipline" to protect its central role in the current monetary order, and resume abiding by the rules to allow disagreements to be resolved peacefully and democracy to function.
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