Ken Griffin says he’s ‘very anxious’ about Trump’s tariff policy

Speaking at the Oxford Union in the UK on Monday, the Citadel founder called tariffs — a central tenet of Trump’s economic agenda — a “long, slippery slope” that can be profitable in the short run but damaging to US companies’ ability to compete globally in the long run. 

“I am very anxious about the president’s willingness to engage in tariffs as a matter of trade policy,” Griffin said.

Rather than having to “deal with regulatory overreach,” US businesses will “return” to creating jobs and growing their businesses and the economy over the next four years, Griffin said.

Earlier this year, Griffin called Trump’s tariff policies “regretful,” but said he thought a Trump administration would be good for markets. 

In a wide-ranging discussion Monday that touched on politics, investing and immigration, among other topics, the 56-year-old billionaire also said he thinks governments continue to spend beyond their means and that he hopes that Trump’s administration will pull back the scope of government. 

Griffin has been increasingly outspoken about his views on US political issues, promoting a lower-tax, free-market agenda and lambasting Democrats as being too soft on crime. He has also been a vocal critic of pro-Palestinian protests across elite college campuses in the US, calling the demonstrations the product of a “failed education system.”

Griffin, who predicted last month at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative that Trump would win the election, donated more than $100 million to pro-Republican political action committees in this presidential cycle, according to campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. 

Many big-ticket donors flocked to Trump late in the campaign, setting aside reservations about his policies, personality and legal woes. Griffin was among prominent Wall Street billionaires to either support other candidates or openly oppose the former president’s path to the nomination. Trump’s billionaire support only began to coalesce in March, when he became the Republican nominee.

Immigration Reservations

In his Monday remarks, Griffin also expressed reservations about Trump’s pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, saying the administration needs to arrive at a more nuanced immigration policy. 

“I do not know how to do that as either a humanitarian justification or economic justification,” Griffin said of mass deportations. When it comes to “the people who have come to our country who are gainfully employed, who are contributing to our economy” and trying to establish roots in the US, “I do not understand” how the government could deport those people, he said.

“I think we need to arrive at a more thoughtful immigration policy than just deporting millions of Americans,” he said. 

Griffin, who launched Citadel in 1990, has since built the firm into a $65 billion powerhouse and amassed a personal fortune now worth about $42.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

Multistrategy hedge funds such as Citadel rely on teams of traders to bet across asset classes and produce steady returns, with little tolerance for losses. Soaring demand for such products has sparked an unprecedented bidding war for talent in the industry. 

When asked about his single-best investment, Griffin went back to what has made his firm the most profitable hedge fund in the world.

“The single-best investments I’ve ever made” are investments in people. “Nothing else comes close,” he said. “You find somebody who’s really bright, really driven and creative, and you get behind them 110%. Nothing beats that investment.”

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