Hedge fund titan Ken Griffin rips White House over tax bill
Hedge fund titan Ken Griffin ramped up his war of words with the Trump White House on Wednesday, blasting the president's so-called 'Big, Beautiful' tax bill for adding to Uncle Sam's eye-popping $36 trillion debt pile.
The 56-year-old CEO of Citadel, who is worth $42 billion according to Forbes, told the business magazine's annual Iconoclast summit in New York City that if the bill passed, the country would 'unquestionably add several trillion dollars' to the US debt.
'There are a lot of question marks as to why we are continuing to restart tax cuts when we have a fiscal deficit that is this big,' Griffin said at the business magazine's annual Iconoclast summit in lower Manhattan
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4 Griffin warned that the Trump tax bill will only add to America's debt pile.
REUTERS
'The United States' fiscal house is not in order,' Griffin added. 'You cannot run deficits of 6 or 7% at full employment after years of growth. That is just fiscally irresponsible.'
Analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecasts that there is a $2.4 trillion black hole in the president's flagship tax bill.
Griffin, who moved his firm from Chicago to Miami in 2022, likewise warned that the administration should rein in spending and that investors are already worried about America's finances — posing major risks in the bond markets.
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'US default prices are probably the same as Italy or Greece,' he said, referring to the so-called credit default swap markets where investors can bet on whether someone will fail to pay their bills.
The GOP megadonor also took aim at Trump for criticizing Walmart CEO Doug McMillon after he warned of needing to raise prices in response to higher import costs.
'We should not criticize CEOs for being honest, right? And that's all the CEO of Walmart was doing,' he told the audience in lower Manhattan. 'Shame on the administration.'
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The Post has approached the White House for comment.
4 Elon Musk, who has only recently left the Trump administration, has been repeatedly griping about the bill on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
REUTERS
More broadly, Griffin lamented the 'uncertainty' that now clouds investment decisions in the US as a result of policies that have 'called into question American exceptionalism.'
'The administration's attempts to use tariffs come at a dear price for the US economy and come at a dear price for the US consumers, who will undoubtedly pay higher prices,' Griffin told the audience at the upmarket Cipriani ballroom on Broadway in lower Manhattan.
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'Why do we aspire to bring back to the United States jobs that are actually moving out of China into lower-cost jurisdictions? Why are we aspiring to be the nation of the lowest cost and the lowest-paid workforce in the world? That makes no sense to me.'
4 The tariff tiff blew up at the Beverly Hills Hilton where Trump's allies organized a rival VIP welcome party to go up against Griffin's traditional Milken opener.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Griffin, who voted for Trump in November's presidential election, has been a staunch critic of his administration's tariff and trade policies since the real estate mogul's second inauguration earlier this year.
The row between the two men spilled over at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills last month, where allies of President Trump organized a rival VIP welcome bash to go up against the Citadel supremo's traditional opening reception.
Trump unveiled his tariff plans on April 2, which he dubbed Liberation Day, as he sought to renegotiate new trade deals with countries he believed were treating the United States unfairly.
4 Griffin used a Forbes summit to launch a string of broadsides at the Trump administration over its trade and tariff policies.
AP
The move has since faced a string of legal challenges, with negotiations failing to bear any fruit until now, apart from an agreement with post-Brexit Britain that was announced on May 8.
But discussions with the European Union, one of America's largest trading partners, have faltered, as The Post exclusively reported on May 7.
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