Oct 7, 2025 Latest Videos
Former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin discusses the state of the US economy and how he sees President Trump's tariff policy impacting growth and inflation at the Greenwich Economic Forum in conversation with Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said President Donald Trump’s economic policies have stoked the “greatest uncertainty” in his six-decade career, warning that they will undermine confidence, worsen the US fiscal trajectory and endanger US credibility on the global stage.
“A lot of what is going on is adversely affecting confidence — it is now, and I think even more so in the future,” Rubin said in an interview from the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York Tuesday, referring to confidence in the rule-of-law. He said the Trump administration appears to be targeting its opponents in its application of law, and is outright violating commitments made in treaties with trading partners.
Rubin singled out the efforts by Elon Musk’s DOGE to shrink federal spending as “doing tremendous damage to government and to the recipients of government services.” Rather than creating efficiencies, “what DOGE is going to do is tear apart our government.”
Rubin, who oversaw a shift to budget surpluses as Treasury chief under Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1990s after serving as co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said that while some federal spending can be cut, “as a practical matter” there’s insufficient scope for that to rein in deficits.
More broadly, Rubin hammered Trump’s tariff hikes for wrecking the foundation of the postwar global economic framework, which was based on reducing trade barriers in order to boost productivity and people’s livelihoods.

Postwar Framework
“We have spent all these years since World War II developing alliances and allies, supported by all sorts of commitments,” he said. This was “all in our economic self-interest and our geopolitical self-interest — and I think we’re putting all that at risk.”
Trump as of Tuesday has added 25% tariffs on all Mexican and most Canadian goods, and a 20% surtax on Chinese goods, with further levies planned in the coming weeks.