CEO of Citadel Ken Griffin is interviewed Chairman of the Milken Institute Michael Milken (not pictured) throughout the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 7, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin on Thursday knocked the Trump administration for making offers with massive firms to keep away from the complete extent of its tariff insurance policies, describing such agreements as anti-American.
“Is that our country, that we’re going to favor the big and the connected?,” Griffin instructed CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an unique interview from Miami. “That’s not the American story.”
“When the state becomes involved in picking winners and losers, there’s only one way this game ends: All of us lose,” added Griffin, a billionaire and high Wall Street determine.
Griffin’s feedback come as U.S. firms have raced to make agreements with the White House that enable them to keep away from the steepest levies positioned on imports from many overseas international locations. Multiple well-known companies together with Apple and Nvidia have introduced significant domestic investments in latest months, which have been considered by some as methods to realize favor from the Trump administration.
“I spoke about my concerns with the crony capitalism if we went down the path of tariffs,” Griffin stated. “The line outside the White House of every business arguing why they should be exempt from paying tariffs on what they import into their products is nauseating.”
The Wall Street bigwig stated tariffs could be thought of just like a “national sales tax.” Because the levies would make up a better proportion of family earnings for decrease earners, Griffin stated there are “issues of equity and fairness” concerned with Trump’s tariff coverage.
Griffin warned that firms ought to act fastidiously in relation to attempting to win favor of a present White House group. He stated these firms may discover themselves disliked or having to make new offers when a brand new particular person takes the nation’s highest workplace.
“It’s the government’s engagement in picking winners and losers. And we should tread carefully on that water,” Griffin stated. “In fact, we should just stay out of it. That’s where the crocodiles live.”
“The core competency won’t be that you can drive innovation,” he added. “It’s that you can drive the right favors from D.C.”