Billionaire and longtime Republican donor Ross Perot Jr., the eldest son of 1992 independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, told Bloomberg News Thursday that President Donald Trump’s tariff threats are a “big concern.”
Perot — who donated to Trump’s 2024 and 2020 campaigns and initially endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries — is the founder of the real estate development company Hillwood, which in October 2024 received a $80 million Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant from the Department of Transportation during the Biden administration.
In addition to describing Trump’s tariff threats as “inflationary” and “confusing,” Perot also expressed concern about the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants and how it will affect the workforce needed to complete his real estate development projects in Texas.
"Mexico keeps us young," says Ross Perot Jr., a billionaire Texas real estate developer and longtime Republican donor, as he expresses concern about the economic fallout if President Trump intensifies his immigration crackdown https://t.co/GIvPM8iwZT pic.twitter.com/Q9bKKHPzKw
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) February 20, 2025
Perot said: “If you get rid of that much labor, how are we going to build the homes and how [are we] going to build the warehouses, and what will the pricing be when you do that?” Perot said.
“There’s a real dilemma coming: Once you deport the criminal element, how much farther can you afford to go if you’re going to try to keep inflation in check?”
Note: According to the American Immigration Council, in 2022, more than 507,700 immigrants worked in the Texas construction industry, representing 40% of the sector’s workforce.
Perot added: “If you deport the immigrants that are here illegally that haven’t committed a crime then you’re going to start to really feel it in the business sector and in the employment sector. We don’t have enough people in America to do the work.”
He suggested: “So ideally, take the people that are here, figure out a way to make them legal, get them on the tax rolls and let them continue to help build our economy.”
Note: The American Immigration Council also notes that in 2022 households led by undocumented immigrants paid $75.6B in total taxes. This includes $29.0B in state and local taxes and $46.6B in federal taxes.
Perot suggested that the U.S. “fully integrate” North America “to dominate the global economy for the next one hundred years.”
But in order to do that, he added, “We have to have the vision of integration.”
Perot remains loyal to President Trump “because number one, big picture, we know taxes won’t go up, we know regulation is going to go down” and he is optimistic that POTUS’s moves may fuel a “great rebound in US manufacturing.”
But it won’t be easy. Perot said he expects a “brutal political fight” around budget talks in Washington but predicted that the economic outlook would clear up by before June.
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