Ken Griffin, chief government officer and founding father of Citadel Advisors LLC, speaks throughout an Financial Membership of New York occasion in New York, US, on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024.
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin issued a warning in opposition to the steep tariffs President-elect Donald Trump vowed to implement, saying crony capitalism could possibly be a consequence.
“I’m gravely involved that the rise of tariffs places us on a slippery slope in the direction of crony capitalism,” the billionaire investor mentioned Thursday on the Financial Membership of New York.
The Citadel founder mentioned home firms may take pleasure in a short-term profit of getting their rivals taken away. Long run, nonetheless, it does extra hurt to company America and the financial system as firms lose competitiveness and productiveness, he mentioned.
Crony capitalism is an financial system marked by shut, mutually advantageous relationships between enterprise leaders and authorities officers.
“Those self same firms that take pleasure in that momentary sugar rush of getting their rivals faraway from the battlefield quickly develop into complacent, quickly take with no consideration their newfound financial superiority, and admittedly, they develop into much less aggressive on each the world stage and fewer aggressive at assembly the wants of the American shopper,” Griffin mentioned on the occasion.
Trump made common tariffs a core tenet of his financial marketing campaign pitch, floating a 20% levy on all imports from all nations with a particularly harsh 60% price for Chinese language items.
The protectionist commerce coverage may make manufacturing of products costlier and lift shopper costs, simply because the world recovers from pandemic-era inflation spikes.
“Now you are going to discover the halls of Washington actually crammed with the particular curiosity teams and the lobbyists as individuals search for continued larger and better tariffs to maintain away overseas competitors, and to guard inefficient American companies which have failed to fulfill the wants of the American shopper,” Griffin mentioned.
On the similar occasion, Griffin additionally mentioned he isn’t targeted on taking Citadel Securities public within the foreseeable future. Citadel is a market maker based by Griffin in 2002.
“We’re targeted on constructing the enterprise, on investing in our future. And we do imagine that there are advantages to being non-public throughout this era of very, very speedy development,” he mentioned.
