Less than half a year since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, billionaire Ken Griffin was asked during a recent visit to China, “Why are you trying to be like China?”
He had no good answer.
The founder of the $66 billion hedge fund Citadel and its sister company, market maker Citadel Securities, Griffin is a megadonor to the Republican Party and was excited for the American economy after Trump’s election.
Now he’s confused by the administration’s actions. He said there isn’t a logical reason the US would want to bring manufacturing “jobs that’ll never pay much” to the country, but that seems to be the goal of the tariff policies pursued by Trump’s administration.
“It’s one thing to make Nikes, it’s another thing to make F-35 fighters,” he said Thursday morning at the Forbes Iconoclast conference in Manhattan.
Griffin has been critical of the administration’s tariff policies in recent months, calling them a mistake that will hurt the economy and consumers. He said Thursday that they were an “anti-growth agenda,” and the expected growth of the US economy has been cut in half since Trump took office.
He continued his criticism of Trump, whom he voted for, focusing on the current tax bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives and is now in the Senate. Griffin said it will add “several trillions” of dollars to the deficit and lacks “tough decisions.”
“The United States’ fiscal house is not in order,” Griffin said, questioning the decision to cut taxes on small and medium-sized businesses when the deficit was rising.
He said credit markets have noted the uncertainty plaguing the US thanks to the administration’s policies, noting that “the risk of a US default is priced the same as Italy or Greece.”
“There’s just no words for it,” he said.
If there was any optimism in his talk, it was about the resilience of American CEOs. He said hiring and capital expenditures will slow as long as there is uncertainty from Washington. Still, he was impressed with how individuals like Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, explained the impact tariffs would have on the consumer.
“We should not criticize CEOs for being honest,” he said, adding, “shame on the administration” for scolding McMillon and other CEOs for talking about the tariffs’ impact.
There’s still time for Trump and his team to return to pro-growth economic policies, he said, and there’s no time to wait.
“The United States desperately needs growth” to pay for entitlements like Social Security, he said.
