CEOs are afraid to criticize Trump in public, Carlyle chair says

US President Donald Trump’s aggressive response to public criticism is an “effective tool” for silencing those business leaders who disagree with his economic policies, Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubenstein said Friday.

Trump’s tariffs, especially his massive levies on imports from China, have rattled many executives, Rubenstein said at the World Economy Summit in Washington, DC.

“I’m amazed in the last two weeks how many business leaders are sounding alarms who I speak to privately and who won’t say a word,” Rubenstein told Stephanie Ruhle, MSNBC host and Semafor contributor.

“The way that this president operates is that if he disagrees with you, he will call you out in a very visible way. And people don’t like to be called out and criticized in public. It’s a very effective technique that has worked to quiet people.”

According to Rubenstein, some executives have privately told Trump that his tariffs have produced “some real risks,” including the possibility of pushing the economy into recession.

Rubenstein argued that Trump’s advisers need to “find a way for him to pivot … which will give him the ability to say, ‘I got something for what I did.’”

Rubenstein also critiqued the president’s hardened stance toward Beijing: Chinese leader Xi Jinping represents a formidable adversary, he said, and the country’s economy has an “enormous amount of resilience.”

“They lived through the Cultural Revolution,” Rubenstein said. “I don’t think you can intimidate China into agreeing to what you want.”