Billionaire financiers lambast Donald Trump’s tariffs

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Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and longtime Republican donor, has lambasted Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs for being set too high and implemented too quickly.

Langone told the Financial Times the US president was being “poorly advised”, the 46 per cent tariff on Vietnam was “bullshit” and the additional 34 per cent tariff on China was “too aggressive, too soon” and did not give “serious negotiations a chance to work”.

“Forty-six per cent on Vietnam? Come on!” said Langone. “You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling’.”

Langone is one of a growing number of billionaire financiers openly criticising the president’s decision to increase tariffs on imports to heights not seen since the 1930s as they grow increasingly alarmed at the resulting market meltdown.

The tariffs — a universal 10 per cent duty plus additional individual levies for many countries — have sent global markets into a tailspin. Over the past week, the S&P 500 has fallen almost 10 per cent.

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, a mentor to Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, has also weighed in, posting on X on Sunday: “I do not support tariffs exceeding 10%.”

So too did billionaire donor Bill Ackman, a supporter of Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign, who described the tariffs as “a major policy error”.

Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, wrote in an email to the FT that while “tariffs have occasionally helped a few people for fairly short periods”, they “are rarely good for anyone”.

Tesla and Starlink owner Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest donor, has also hit out at the tariffs. On Saturday, Musk called for “a zero-tariff situation” between the US and Europe and remarked that Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior adviser on trade, “ain’t built shit”.

In his annual letter to shareholders on Monday, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon also criticised the measures, warning that the tariffs “will probably increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession”.

“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he added.

Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary during his first term, has also weighed in, warning that the tariffs had had an unexpected impact.

“It’s more severe than I would have expected,” Ross told the FT. “Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought.”

Ross added that businesses and investment firms could deal with good news and bad news but warned: “It’s hard to deal with uncertainty. Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.”

Langone said a “more manageable and certainly more constructive” approach would have been to impose a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff on imported goods, followed by bilateral negotiations with countries.

“I don’t understand the goddamn formula,” said Langone. “I believe he’s been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they’re applying.”

Ross, who refrained from directly criticising Trump, agreed there were problems with the way the tariffs had been calculated. “I also have some doubts about the logic of the formula to compute the tariffs. It’s a fairly unconventional way of measuring tariffs.”

He added: “I think that the countries most adversely affected hopefully will come forward and therefore quickly make a deal.”

Langone said that while he agreed with a number of measures carried out by the Trump administration, “I have a different read on when I do it, how I do it. I wouldn’t take on everything all at once”.

He expected Trump would “eventually” engage in a series of bilateral meetings.

“I think it’ll work,” Langone said. “Right now, what everybody’s terrified of is a tariff war.”