- Reid Hoffman said the US risks alienating its allies, which could negatively impact American businesses.
- The LinkedIn cofounder said on a recent podcast that he wants to prove the country can still be a “stable partner.”
- He added that collaboration among democratic countries is important to global cohesion.
Reid Hoffman thinks the US is in danger of alienating its allies — which he says could lead to consequences for American tech companies.
“One of the problems with the current general administration approach of ‘how to lose friends and alienate people’ — the opposite of Dale Carnegie — is that that will create substantial problems for all American industry, including the tech industry,” the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn and partner at VC firm Greylock said on an episode of the podcast Possible.
In the first months since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration announced steep tariffs on neighboring Canada and Mexico, as well as sweeping duties on Chinese products — and increased friction with longtime European allies.
“I mean, obviously most of the actions, and most of the gestures, tend to be the — when you come over to Europe and say, it’s an America, not just America first, it’s an America-only kind of position, that obviously breaks alliances,” Hoffman said. “And gets people to think about like, ‘Well, who else should I potentially ally with?'”
Hoffman said he believes that if the country neglects diplomacy, international rivals to US-based companies become increasingly better-positioned to siphon business from estranged customers.
“And so having all these discussions with people about like, OK, what kind of technologists here say, ‘Well, I’d rather buy a BYD car than a Tesla,'” Hoffman said. “One is kind of saying, ‘Hey, I’m just trying to be a stable partner,’ and the other one’s saying, ‘You’re my enemy.'”
Despite rising tensions, Hoffman said he wants to convince people that the US businesses are still smart investments — and that the country itself can be reliable.
“Part of what I’m trying to do here is persuade folks that the US actually, in fact, can be a continuing stable partner, despite randomness of tariffs and things,” Hoffman said.
Not all Americans in tech follow the same lines of thinking, he added.
“The business of America being business is still actually, in fact, something that we hold — a bunch of us Americans — hold dear,” Hoffman said. “And try to operate and try to say, ‘Hey, there’s still bridges we can build here.'”
The more that countries on the world stage can collaborate to create more democratic “centers of innovation,” Hoffman said, the better off global society will be.
“It’s part of what creates the multilateral system that makes a much healthier, stable global society,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman was a big supporter of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2024 and has previously said he expected Trump to retaliate against business leaders who refused to back him.
“I think that there’s a greater than 50% chance that there will be repercussions from a misdirection and corruption of the institutions of state to respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected,” Hoffman said on a December episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast.
After Trump’s victory, Hoffman also wrote a post on X in November saying he hoped the president wouldn’t “corruptly play favorites in business or foreign policy,” and that he’d refrain from enacting a “crippling, 19th-century tariff regime.”
“What matters today is the same as what mattered last week. How do we come together to build a better future for the broad society of Americans?” Hoffman said.
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