Ken Griffin Slams Trump for Granting Some Companies Tariff Favors

Citadel’s CEO mentioned it was “anti-American” for President Donald Trump to provide large corporations tariff aid.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire CEO and founding father of the hedge fund, criticized Trump throughout a Thursday CNBC interview.

“Is that our nation, that we’ll favor the large and the linked? That is not the American story,” Griffin mentioned to CNBC.

“When the state turns into concerned in selecting winners and losers, there’s just one manner this recreation ends: All of us lose,” he mentioned.

His feedback come after Trump mentioned in August that he would impose a 100% tariff on the import of semiconductors, however corporations that promised to put money into the US can be exempt from it.

In the identical month, Apple introduced that it would invest $100 billion in its US amenities, along with the $500 billion it pledged in February.

Trump additionally allowed American chip giants like Nvidia and AMD to promote some chips to China in the event that they agreed to grant the US authorities a 15% cut of their China income.

“The road exterior the White Home of each enterprise arguing why they need to be exempt from paying tariffs on what they import into their merchandise is nauseating,” Griffin mentioned to CNBC.

Griffin has beforehand weighed in on the Trump administration’s financial insurance policies.

In September, Griffin co-authored an opinion piece for The Wall Avenue Journal, during which he criticized Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence. Trump has been pressuring Fed chair Jerome Powell to decrease rates of interest for months.

“Congress has an obligation to supervise the Fed, and this oversight should be freed from undue interference from the manager department,” Griffin wrote within the opinion piece.

Representatives for Griffin at Citadel didn’t reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider.