5 minEconomy
Ken Griffin Calls Trump's America First Manufacturing Push a 'Disaster'
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said Trump's tariff-driven reindustrialization plan has been inflationary and has severed global supply chains, arguing most Americans do not want factory jobs and that robotics should drive manufacturing instead.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has sharply criticized President Trump's America First economic agenda, calling the tariff-driven push to reindustrialize the country a «disaster» and arguing the plan was flawed from the start. Speaking at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets event, the billionaire investor said the strategy has raised prices and disrupted global commerce without delivering the factory revival it promised.
«To be blunt, like, I hate to say it, but I've been right. It's been pro-inflation,» Griffin said. «It has certainly taken supply chains around the world and severed them. And we're not going to industrialize efficiently in our country.» His remarks came roughly 18 months after Trump's Rose Garden address, in which the president promised that «jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country» under sweeping tariffs on trading partners.
Griffin's core objection is demographic and cultural as much as economic. With unemployment at 4.2%, he argued that a factory-led revival runs against what most Americans actually want. «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,» he said.
That view is echoed in labor market data. Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi noted this summer that unemployment among native-born Americans had begun to rise, based on a 12-month moving average of seasonally unadjusted figures. Part of the explanation, Zandi said, is that U.S.-born workers are reluctant to take jobs historically held by immigrants at relatively low 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.» He described the positions as arduous work requiring physical hardship, adding that native-born workers «haven't done these jobs for quite some time and are in no mood to take them now—certainly not at these wages.»
Instead of relying on human labor, Griffin advocated for robotics, increasingly powered by artificial intelligence, to handle U.S. manufacturing of essential goods efficiently. In September he announced a $3 billion gift to Carnegie Mellon University in Miami to pursue what he called the «next era of American innovation.»
«We want re-industrialized America to be a really industrialized America with robotics running our factories,» Griffin said. «Like, that's forward-thinking. That's how our country secures greater independence from the rest of the world on items that are important to our national interests.»
The robotics proposal carries its own complications. The St. Louis Fed estimates about 12.6 million Americans work in manufacturing, concentrated in electrical and component production. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the sector accounted for 7.4% of total employment in 2025 and is expected to contribute 7.2% by 2035. While smaller than retail, health care, or state and local government, manufacturing remains a livelihood for millions.
That dependence helps explain why Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates floated a robot tax in an August essay. «A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net,» Gates wrote, adding that it «would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper.»
Griffin's assessment lands as the administration's trade policy faces continued scrutiny from investors who warn that tariffs raise input costs and invite retaliation. His argument reframes the debate: rather than asking whether factories can return, he questions whether Americans want them to—and whether automation, not protectionism, is the realistic path to industrial resilience.
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