Ken Griffin Says Trump Tariffs Hurt US Industry

President Donald Trump's effort to revive American manufacturing through sweeping tariffs is increasing inflation and disrupting international supply chains without guaranteeing a factory employment boom, according to Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. Speaking at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets conference, Griffin argued that labor shortages and workers' reluctance to accept physically demanding factory jobs undermine the administration's industrial strategy.

Griffin criticized the policy approximately 18 months after Trump outlined his manufacturing ambitions during a Rose Garden address known as Liberation Day. He argued that tariffs have made international production networks less efficient while raising concerns about the cost of rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity.

"To be blunt, like, I hate to say it, but I've been right. It's been pro-inflation," Griffin said.

He also questioned whether the United States could efficiently expand factory production under current labor market conditions, citing an unemployment rate of 4.2%. Griffin argued that expanding domestic manufacturing would require a realistic assessment of which jobs American workers are willing to accept.

"If you have this dream of an industrialized America, number one is most people don't want to live that dream. They don't want to be in factories making Nike's and T-shirts," Griffin said.

Griffin advocated expanding automation, particularly robotics powered by artificial intelligence, to manufacture goods considered important to US national interests. In September, he announced a $3 billion gift to Carnegie Mellon University Miami to support what he described as the next era of American innovation.

"We want re-industrialized America to be a really industrialized America with robotics running our factories," Griffin said.

Griffin's position comes amid broader questions about whether tariffs can restore manufacturing employment while keeping production costs competitive. Manufacturing remains a significant source of employment, but automation has emerged as an alternative to relying exclusively on human labor for expanding industrial output.

According to estimates from the St. Louis Fed, approximately 12.6 million Americans work in manufacturing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that manufacturing accounted for 7.4% of total employment in 2025 and projected that the share would decline to 7.2% by 2035.

Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi has also highlighted difficulties in recruiting US-born workers for jobs historically filled by immigrants. His analysis of a 12-month moving average of seasonally unadjusted data indicated that unemployment among US-born workers had begun to rise, underscoring a mismatch between available jobs and workers' willingness to accept them at prevailing wages.

"It just goes to show how difficult many of these jobs are," Zandi said. "Native-born workers would take them, but it would require much, much higher wages ... [and that] would make it uneconomic for the businesses to actually produce whatever it is they're doing."

Zandi described the physical demands of many factory positions as a central obstacle to recruitment, particularly when employers offer wages that do not compensate workers for difficult conditions.

"These jobs are typically ones that are very difficult, very arduous jobs that require a lot of physical hardship, and the native-born workers just haven't done these jobs for quite some time and are in no mood to take them now—certainly not at these wages," Zandi said.

The expansion of automation has also raised concerns about employment security and the need to help displaced workers transition into other jobs. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates proposed a robot tax in an August essay, arguing that such a measure could support retraining and strengthen the social safety net.

"A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net," Gates wrote. "It would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper."