Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone says he is sold on Trump

Ken Langone’s public turn back toward Donald Trump mattered at Home Depot for one basic reason: tariffs hit the store floor long before they show up in a political speech. The company’s co-founder said on CNBC that he was “sold on Trump” and believed Trump had a “good shot at going down in history as one of our best presidents ever,” a striking shift after months of sharp criticism.

Langone had been one of Trump’s more visible business-world skeptics after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill. He said then that he felt “betrayed,” called the riot a “disgrace,” and said he would support Joe Biden. In April 2025, he went after Trump’s tariff agenda even more directly, calling the duties on Vietnam “bullshit” and saying the China rate was “too aggressive, too soon.” For Home Depot associates, that is the part of the story that lands closest to daily work: import costs can shape shelf prices, contractor demand, and how much room managers have to keep promotions competitive when customers walk in expecting summer project deals.

The White House quickly seized on Langone’s reversal. In an “ICYMI” post, it highlighted his praise of Trump’s leadership, his economic policies and the administration’s response to the Iran strike. Langone also said Trump was “acting presidential” and that he was impressed with the people around him. The political theater matters less to store teams than the policy signal underneath it. When a founder-level voice who knows retail and capital spending says tariffs are the issue he is watching, Home Depot employees have reason to pay attention to what that means for price tags, buying decisions and the cadence of customer traffic.

Langone’s public positioning has moved before. He backed Trump in 2016 and gave $100,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee. By late 2023, he had swung toward Nikki Haley, saying she was the only person he saw who could give Trump a run. That makes the July 2025 endorsement less like a straight-line loyalty play and more like a judgment that Trump’s second-term direction was worth backing despite earlier objections.

Langone remains a heavyweight in New York business circles and serves as chairman of the board of trustees of NYU Langone Health. For Home Depot, his latest turn back toward Trump lands where it counts most: on the question of whether tariffs will keep pressing on retail prices, supplier costs and the company’s ability to balance value for pro customers with margin discipline across the chain.