Kenneth Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel and one of the top donors to the Republican Party, said “America is open for business again,” following the results of the United States elections.
With a Republican on the cusp of assuming the Oval Office, and soon-to-be Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, “the endless amount of regulatory and litigation-induced paralysis from the Biden administration is over,” he said.
Mr. Griffin said he voted for President-elect Donald J. Trump. He has been one of the top donors to Republican campaigns, including this year, but he didn’t donate to Mr. Trump’s victorious campaign. He had previously derided Mr. Trump as a “three-time loser.” Despite sitting on the sidelines for the Trump campaign, Mr. Griffin said he was happy that Mr. Trump prevailed.
“I will do whatever I can do to help support the president-elect,” he said.
Mr. Griffin downplayed one of the biggest concerns about Trumponomics — that tariffs could dent growth and accelerate inflation. He said it remained unclear whether Mr. Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China would materialize, adding that the talk of tariffs imposed by the United States was “small ball compared to the role that the world is looking to us for.” He said he didn’t see tariffs as the most important business issue.
Mr. Griffin, who had publicly pushed for the Apollo Global Management chief executive Marc Rowan for Treasury Secretary, said he didn’t have any personal experience with Mr. Trump’s ultimate choice, Scott Bessent. Mr. Griffin was wary of some of Mr. Bessent’s ideas for potentially limiting the independence of the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s autonomy, he said, was “incredibly important to the preservation and strength of our economy.” He also said it was “extraordinarily important to the sanctity of the dollar.”
While criticizing the Biden administration’s “reckless fiscal spending,” Mr. Griffin was skeptical that Elon Musk, who Mr. Trump said would run what he has called the Department of Government Efficiency, could succeed in slashing government spending.
“It’ll be very hard to squeeze numbers in the trillions of dollars out of the baseline budget,” Mr. Griffin said. “In particular, because we’ve increased interest expense in such a profound way” over the last eight years. Cuts, Mr. Griffin added, will be “politically very unpopular.”
Mr. Griffin, who has long been a critic of the cryptocurrency industry, said he was still not convinced that it solved problems in the economy, even as a massive rally in Bitcoin has pushed its value above $96,000 on Wednesday. But he has softened his stance against the crypto sector, and acknowledged that it “may have a future” as people seek to “get away from the yoke of government.”
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