Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin’s advice for Trump: Don’t cut taxes, let ambitious immigrants into the US, and hire Apollo CEO Marc Rowan

Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel and Citadel Securities.

The billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin is one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party but has some worries about the effect of policies the Trump administration has promised.

Speaking on Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, Griffin said that while immigration and inflation were clearly the two biggest problems for voters this election, severe policy responses could hurt the country and the economy.

Immigration to the US, he said, should still be open to people who want to come and work and be a part of American communities. He argued that deporting all noncitizens would also increase inflation, as Americans “take for granted” the work immigrants do every day.

“I’m not sure how this lunch would work” without this group of people, he said, adding, “It’s not feasible for us to deport every person who is not an American citizen and expect the economy to work the next day.”

Additionally, he said the “best and brightest” around the world should still be drawn to the US and argued the country should make it easy for them to come and build businesses here. He said most of Citadel’s leadership team members are immigrants and described Peng Zhao, the Chinese-born CEO of his market maker, Citadel Securities, as an example of “how fortunate our country has been.”

While Griffin has fought against tax increases in the past, including a $54 million campaign to defeat an Illinois tax initiative in 2020, he warned against cutting taxes given the country’s debt.

“I don’t think we have the fiscal room to cut taxes from where they are today,” he said, arguing that some taxes might even need to be raised and that putting “America’s fiscal house in order” would make politicians take “really unpopular” positions.

Griffin’s plea to Marc Rowan

Griffin isn’t the first Wall Street leader to push for a more moderate approach to immigration and tax policy. Speaking a few blocks away on Thursday morning, Manny Roman, the CEO of Pimco, said that pairing a tight labor market with an anti-immigration stance was a concern, as tax-paying, goods-consuming immigrants are good for growth and fill the demand for labor.

“You need to have a pro-immigration policy, and that’s the tension,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker at the Evident AI Symposium.

“There are all sorts of promises; I can’t tell the one that the new administration will follow,” he said. “Giving tax cuts to wealthy people is probably not the most conducive thing that one could do.”

Roman said tax cuts and tariffs would increase the government deficit, leaving the Trump administration with less room for error in choosing policies.

“So the margins of error are actually not that wide, and you can make a perfectly reasonable argument that the Trump administration will have less leeway than they wish they had because of the constraints and the industry condition,” Roman said.

A Reuters article published two days after the election described unnamed Wall Street leaders as saying they hoped Trump’s aides would rein in extreme policies that could increase the deficit.

The chatter on Wall Street has been about a nominee for treasury secretary — plenty of donors and advisors, helped by their surrogates, are battling for the nod. A name that has recently gotten traction is Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, whom Trump interviewed at his Florida home this week.

In his talk on Thursday, Griffin complimented Rowan’s abilities and asked that Rowan — on behalf of himself and “everyone in the room” — “please take the job.”

Laughter came and quickly subsided before Griffin spoke again.

“Please take the job,” he repeated.