Summary
Home Depot co-founder and GOP megadonor Ken Langone blasted Trump’s sweeping tariffs as “bulls–t,” calling the 10% across-the-board rate and country-specific hikes—like 34% on China and 46% on Vietnam—“too aggressive” and poorly calculated.
Langone criticized the administration’s formula, based on trade deficits, as nonsensical.
Other prominent figures, including economists and billionaires like Stanley Druckenmiller, Bill Ackman, and Elon Musk, have also spoken out.
Critics warn the tariffs hinder negotiation and lack sound economic grounding. Langone said Trump is being “poorly advised” on trade policy.
Yeah, founder of home Depot can go fuck himself.
Also don’t shop at home Depot, he might be gone but the company still donated heavily Republican compared to most other hardware stores outside of Menards.
I hate that I can’t avoid them entirely in my area except for nuts-and-bolts type things, which I go to my local hardware store for. Home Depot and Lowe’s have a monopoly in my area when it comes to most goods, but I had to give up on Lowe’s entirely due to the truly terrible customer experience.
(Home Depot has a bad customer experience too, but my local Lowe’s is on a different level.)
My local Lowes turned me off by having their music blaring way, way too loud for some event. Like, needed earplugs on that half of the store loud.
Now Home Depot has turned me off by not having any human-run checkout counters anymore, and all the self checkouts have incredibly distracting “we’re recording you” screens. Plus, you know, the politics.
The Ace hardware is still awesome and has a store dog (no outside dogs allowed). Store dog is a friendly, happy lab.
What really annoys me is that my local Home Depot no longer has nuts and bolts in open bins. Often I need some bolts and nuts to connect one thing to another. Sure you can measure, but that introduces room for error. It’s so much better to just take the part you need bits and bobs for to an aisle full of nuts and bolts. Then you can just directly check to see what fits. No need to measure. Just see if the bolt fits in the hole. Zero chance for error. There’s nothing worse than making a drive to a store, getting the thing you need, just to get back home and realize you bought the wrong thing.
They still have nuts and bolts, but they’re sealed in shitty little plastic bags of a handful of items each. I can’t just open a small drawer full of washers, faff about until I find what I need, and then purchase the exact quantity for a given project.
Sure, I get that it’s a theft risk. But come on. We’re talking about nuts and bolts here. It’s not like those have a huge resale value on the black market. Maybe it’s a labor thing, having to keep the bins sorted. But if a hardware store can’t even maintain a good accessible selection of basic mechanical fasteners, what are we even doing anymore?
This is the kind of thing any big hardware store should offer, even if they have to offer it as a loss leader to get people in the door. There have been many trips that I could have gone to Home Depot, for nuts and bolts and some other items. I might spend $50-100 total. However, I make my decision on what store to go to based on a few dollars worth of fasteners. By trying to prevent theft and loss for a few pennies worth of fasteners, Home Depot loses out on hundreds of dollars of my purchases.
It’s not concern about theft, it’s just penny-ante nickel-and-dime BS to get you to buy more than you need. But as you said, it’s so hostile to customers that you wind up going somewhere else for bigger ticket items. Of course the opportunity cost is invisible to them.
I agree wholeheartedly but my local one at least has the male and female gauge out that will let you physically thread something onto
Yeah, I simply choose bad customer service over more money donated to Republicans.
Thankfully around me there’s an Ace hardware that is locally owned by people who aren’t publicly political so that’s my go to.
It’s great that you have that option. Really makes it easy for you