GOP megadonor and Home Depot founder Ken Lagone blasts Trump’s ‘bull****’ tariffs | EUROtoday

Longtime Republican megadonor and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone has slammed the president’s tariffs as “bulls****”.

Trump has confronted widespread backlash after imposing 10 per cent tariffs on all nations – bar Russia – with round 60 international locations deemed the “worst offenders” dealing with even larger levies.

Langone, 89, instructed the Financial Times that the 46 % tariff positioned on Vietnam was “bulls***” and that the 34 % tariff on China – which is bracing for an extra 50 % tariff if it doesn’t take away its counter levies on U.S.imports – was “too aggressive, too soon.”

“Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on!” Langone, who poured hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into Nikki Haley’s marketing campaign for the 2024 presidential race, stated. “You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling.’”

Stock markets have continued to slip with Thursday – the day after Trump’s announcement – marking Wall Street’s single largest decline for the reason that Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 with about $3.1 trillion wiped from the market.

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The S&P 500, which has fallen about 10 % since Trump’s “Liberation Day,” was down one other 0.2 % Monday, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.9 %. The Nasdaq, nonetheless, rallied by 0.1 %.

As markets proceed to slip, Langone argued {that a} “more manageable and certainly more constructive” strategy would have been to impose a common 10 % on imported items, adopted by bilateral talks with particular person international locations.

Like economists who’ve questioned the mathematics behind Trump’s tariffs, Langone additionally stated he struggled to get his head across the calculations.

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

Langone, nonetheless, stated he agreed with a number of initiatives carried out by the Trump administration however questioned the tempo at which they have been 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 stated.

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The billionaire financier stated he believes Trump will have interaction 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 marketing campaign, has joined different billionaires who’ve 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 again the 2024 Trump marketing 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 – instructed the FT that tariffs “are rarely good for anyone.”

Even Elon Musk, Trump’s particular adviser tasked with gutting the federal authorities by way of DOGE, stated he hopes for a “zero-tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe.