Longtime Republican megadonor and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone has slammed the president’s tariffs as “bulls****”.
Trump has faced widespread backlash after imposing 10 percent tariffs on all nations – bar Russia – with around 60 countries deemed the “worst offenders” facing even higher levies.
Langone, 89, told the Financial Times that the 46 percent tariff placed on Vietnam was “bulls***” and that the 34 percent tariff on China – which is bracing for an additional 50 percent tariff if it does not remove its counter levies on U.S.imports – was “too aggressive, too soon.”
“Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on!” Langone, who poured millions of dollars into Nikki Haley’s campaign for the 2024 presidential race, said. “You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling.’”
Stock markets have continued to slide with Thursday – the day after Trump’s announcement – marking Wall Street’s single largest decline since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 with about $3.1 trillion wiped from the market.
The S&P 500, which has fallen about 10 percent since Trump’s “Liberation Day,” was down another 0.2 percent Monday, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.9 percent. The Nasdaq, however, rallied by 0.1 percent.
As markets continue to slide, Langone argued that a “more manageable and certainly more constructive” approach would have been to impose a universal 10 percent on imported goods, followed by bilateral talks with individual countries.
Like economists who have questioned the math behind Trump’s tariffs, Langone also said he struggled to get his head around the calculations.
“I don’t understand the goddamn formula,” he said. “I believe he’s been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation – and the formula they’re applying.”
Langone, however, said he agreed with multiple initiatives carried out by the Trump administration but questioned the pace at which they were being enacted.
“I have a different read on when I do it, how I do it, and of course, what breath would I do it. I wouldn’t take on everything all at once,” he said.
The billionaire financier said he believes Trump will engage in bilateral talks and added: “I think it’ll work.”
“Right now, what everybody’s terrified of is a tariff war,” Langone concluded.
Langone, who donated to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has joined other billionaires who have criticized the president’s sweeping tariff agenda.
Investor Stanley Druckenmiller, a mentor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, wrote on X: “I do not support tariffs exceeding 10%.”
Bill Ackman, a Democratic donor who defected to back the 2024 Trump campaign, tweeted that the president’s levies are “a major policy error.”
Jim Rogers, who co-founded Quantum Fund with George Soros – a Democratic megadonor – told the FT that tariffs “are rarely good for anyone.”
Even Elon Musk, Trump’s special adviser tasked with gutting the federal government through DOGE, said he hopes for a “zero-tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe.
