Ken Griffin, the founder of miulti-strategy hedge fund major Citadel, has branded the sweeping trade tariffs announced by Donald Trump last week as a “huge policy mistake”, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Griffin also expressed concerns that other countries would invoke them as “an opportunity to displace American leadership” around the world.
The Citadel Chief Executive Officer said the tariffs amounted to one of the largest tax increases in US history and would disproportionately fall on middle-class and economically strained households who are unprepared to handle them.
“It is not right to take the family that struggles to make ends meet on $50,000 a year and say, it’s gonna cost you 20, 30, 40% more for your groceries, for a new toaster, for a new vacuum cleaner, for a new car,” Griffin said at a University of Miami event on Monday night. “Even if the dream of jobs coming back to America plays out, that’s a 20-year dream. It’s not 20 weeks. It’s not two years, it’s decades.”
Griffin, a top Republican donor, said that he agreed with the president’s goals of levelling the playing field for American businesses operating abroad and of getting Europeans to increase defence spending. But he also championed America’s role in setting economic terms and conditions for the rest of the world and urged attendees to reach out to members of Congress or the president to advocate for that to continue.
