A billionaire Republican donor who once backed Donald Trump has blasted the president’s tariffs policy as ‘b******t.’
Home Depot founder Ken Langone, 89, joined the growing list of financiers to call out the president for launching his trade war last week.
Langone expressed his disapproval of Trump’s tariff announcement, which he believed was responsible for an economic downturn. He criticized the President for receiving poor advice and for presenting flawed calculations.
‘I don’t understand the goddamn formula,’ Langone, who supported Trump in 2016 and has a net worth of $8.4billion, told The Financial Times.
‘I believe [Trump’s] been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they’re applying.’
He specifically condemned the tariffs imposed on Vietnam as being unjustified and referred to the steep 34% tax increase on Chinese imports as premature and overly aggressive. Langone indicated that such actions hindered the potential for meaningful diplomatic negotiations.
‘Forty-six per cent on Vietnam? Come on!’ said Langone. ‘You might as well tell them, “Don’t even bother calling.”‘
Langone’s stance on tariffs and his support for Trump have fluctuated over time. While he strongly criticized the President’s decisions in this instance, it is worth noting that he had previously commended Trump back in 2019 for his implementation of tariffs on Chinese goods, referring to it as the ‘right thing’ to do.
Home Depot founder Ken Langone, 89, joined the growing list of financiers to call out the president for launching his trade war
Langone criticized the scope and timing of Trump’s tariff announcement that triggered a market collapse
Langone switched political parties around 2022 too, when he vowed to do what he could to support the Biden administration despite previously piling money into Trump’s campaign.
This comes after MAGA ally Ben Shapiro stunningly turned on President Trump and urged him to listen to Elon Musk’s criticism of his tariff policy.
Shapiro, a long-time supporter of the president, smashed the illusion that tariffs are a good business deal for Americans to smithereens, with a startling insight on Monday: ‘Musk is right. Musk happens to be 100 percent right about this.’
The Tesla CEO has been in lockstep with the president on key voter issues since he returned to the White House, but came out swinging against tariffs and exposed a feud with the key advisor who helped bring them to life.
Shapiro gave a blisteringly blunt message to Trump, urging him to do ‘exactly’ what Musk tells him to do in regard to his tariff policy – just days after global markets faced devastating downturns because of his decisions.
Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro has been engaged in a public war of words with Musk since the White House unveiled his controversial reciprocal tariff policy, which sparked market chaos and global fears of a recession.
Musk revealed on Saturday that he hopes the United States will achieve zero-zero tariff agreements with major trade partners.
Wall Street trader Bill Ackman, one of Trump’s most faithful backers in the financial world said on Sunday night that the president needed to put his tariff war on hold or risk a ‘self-induced, economic nuclear winter’.
The Pershing Square Capital Management CEO warned that Trump’s current trajectory could devastate businesses around the world, ‘destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business and as a market to invest capital’.
He urged the president to ‘call a 90-day timeout, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.
‘If, on the other hand, on April 9, we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,’ he added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk came out swinging against tariffs and exposed a feud with the key advisor who helped bring them to life
Bill Ackman, the billionaire boss of Pershing Square Capital Management, said the President needed to put his tariff war on hold or risk a ‘self-induced, economic nuclear winter’
Trump denied he was intentionally engineering a market selloff and insisted he could not foresee market reactions, saying he would not make a deal with other countries unless trade deficits were solved.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz – who ran for re-election calling himself Trump’s ‘strongest supporter’ in the Senate – warned how the tariffs could ‘hurt jobs and hurt America.’
On his own podcast, he said that he’s not a fan of tariffs and was wary of Republicans defending Trump just to defend Trump.
‘I’m seeing a lot of Republican cheerleaders reflexively defending what the White House is doing,’ Cruz said.
Cruz warned that nations reciprocating Trump’s tariffs for lengthy periods of time could hurt the country.
‘If we’re in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, with massive American tariffs, and massive tariffs on American goods in every other country on earth, that is a terrible outcome.’
He said that while ‘the upside could be massive,’ Republicans running to keep their seats next year may face a hostile environment if the plan doesn’t work.
‘If we go into a recession — particularly a bad recession — 2026 in all likelihood, politically would be a bloodbath,’ he said.
