Hedge fund titan Ken Griffin rips White House over ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill: ‘Fiscal house is not in order’
Hedge fund titan Ken Griffin ramped up his war of words with the Trump White House, ripping 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, warned on Thursday that if the bill passes, the country will “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 told the business magazine’s annual Iconoclast summit in New York City.
“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’s failure to rein in spending poses major risks in the bond markets.
“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.”
The Post has approached the White House for comment.
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 said.
“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.”
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.
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.
