Trump rebukes Goldman’s Solomon and bank’s economics research on tariff impact

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. (Mark Lennihan / AP)

U.S. President Donald Trump rebuked Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on Tuesday, saying the bank had been wrong about the potential impact of tariffs on the economy and the stock market.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said it was mostly “companies and governments, many of them foreign, picking up the tabs.”

“But David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due,” the president said, while taking a dig at the Goldman chief’s DJ hobby, which he has since abandoned.

Trump did not specify which Goldman report he was referring to, but Goldman has taken a bearish position on Trump’s tariffs. The Wall Street investment bank declined to comment on the matter.

U.S. consumers had absorbed 22 per cent of tariff costs through June and their share will rise to 67 per cent if the recent tariffs follow the same pattern as the earliest ones, Goldman Sachs Economics Research said in a note published on Aug. 10.

“This implies that U.S. businesses have absorbed more than half of the tariff costs so far but that their share will fall to less than 10 per cent,” analysts led by chief economist Jan Hatzius said.

“I think that David should go out and get himself a new economist,” Trump wrote. Hatzius declined to comment.

The latest Trump salvo comes days after he took aim at Goldman peers JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, alleging without evidence that they discriminated against him by refusing his deposits after his first term.

The president has been vocal with his complaints against corporate executives. Last week, he demanded the resignation of Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan, but praised him after a meeting on Monday.

Since Feb. 1, when Trump kicked off trade wars by slapping levies on imports from Mexico, Canada and China, at least 333 companies worldwide have reacted to the tariffs in some manner, as of August 12, according to a Reuters tracker.

Tariffs are taxes levied on imported goods to typically protect domestic industries or influence trade policies.

Its financial impact can be distributed among manufacturers, retailers and consumers, depending on market conditions and supply-chain dynamics.

Economists continue to study how much of the tariff cost is ultimately passed on to consumers through higher prices.

(Reporting by Manya Saini and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Tatiana Bautzer and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur)