Wall Street pundit Jim Cramer was on board with the idea of reciprocal tariffs, but not the way Donald Trump implemented and executed them.

“I went deep on the numbers today, and the numbers did not make any sense,” Cramer, the host of CNBC’s “Mad Money” and “Squawk on the Street,” told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.

Cramer, who said he was a believer in tariffs as a “fair trade” advocate, was wrong to have confidence in the Trump team’s competence, he said.

“What bothered me … over and over again, the president said, ‘It’s gonna be reciprocal … and that was gonna be so good. And I really believed in it,” he said.

“And I feel like a sucker tonight,” Cramer continued, “because I am not a free-trader and I do not believe in free trade. And I was just as tough if not tougher than his people, but they screwed it up … they did it [in] a totally ill-advised way, and I was very let down. …”

“This is what they came up with? Jeez, come on, have some gumption, have some math,” the CNBC host said.

“It was such a shame because they missed the opportunity and now they have to pay the price,” he added.

The tariffs led to dramatic stock market drops since Thursday.

The S&P 500 tumbled 5.7% Friday, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2,054 points as Wall Street’s worst crisis since the COVID crash deepens. The Nasdaq composite was down 5.5%, with a little more than an hour remaining in trading, after China matched Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war. Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

“None of this stock market, none of this had to happen. And I feel bad because a lot of people lose money when this happens,” Cramer said.

“I hope people will just be calm, be constructive. But the way that they handled it was so bush league that I was surprised. President Trump has people around him who know these things.

“I thought they were gonna do something,” Cramer said. “And what they’d do? They crater the damn stock market and gave us nothing.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.