Jim Cramer Once Backed Best Buy (BBY) – Here’s Why His Trust Later Sold the Stock (2025)

Dionysis Partsinevelos

Tue, Apr 8, 2025, 2:06 PM 7 min read

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Got These 10 Stocks All Wrong. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed 1 year ago.

On Tuesday, April 1 , the host of Mad Moneyopened the show by focusing on President Trump’s tariffs and the economic risks ahead of ‘Liberation Day’. While Cramer expressed sympathy for the President’s goals, he warned viewers that the consequences could be severe for both consumers and the broader economy:

“Now as someone who’s been a huge critic of unrestrained free trade, I am very sympathetic to what President Trump is trying to accomplish with these tariffs. Every other country on earth tries to protect its own domestic industries except America which has spent decades letting foreign competitors steamroll our guys in exchange for cheaper stuff. President Trump is justifiably furious about this he wants to do something about it but solving the problem is going to hurt. We don’t know how much our prices will go up for just about everything, but we do know those tariffs will be used as an excuse to raise prices across the board. It’s been very hard to get a sense of the overall damage.”

READ ALSO:Jim Cramer’s Thoughts on Liberation Day, Tariffs, and 17 Stocks to Watch Right Now, and10 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar Recently.

But despite understanding the motivation behind the policy, Cramer was blunt about the scale of economic disruption that a proposed 20% tariff on all imports would cause:

“Speaking as someone who’s not a fan of free trade I have to be honest here, a 20% across the board tariff on almost all imports that would be horrendous for the economy. That’s a 20% increase on everything we buy from overseas and we import a huge amount of foreign goods in America, and those goods are cheap because that’s the deal. There’s plenty of competition from these companies but with the exception of the auto industry and those that contribute to it -mainly steel – it doesn’t matter anymore. The truth is the jobs that are meant to be protected by tariffs were automated out of existence a long time ago.”

Cramer mentioned that even the industries that stand to benefit in theory, like autos and steel, aren’t necessarily helping the average American:

“The tariffs aren’t protecting us from anything because we barely make anything anymore. The horses left the barn ages ago. Ford and GM will be able to make more money by raising prices but who does that help besides their shareholders and union members? What’s good for General Motors is not necessarily good for America anymore. All people know is that cars will be more expensive; they don’t care about who makes them.”