On "Forbes Newsroom," Spencer Hakimian, founder and chief investment officer of hedge fund Tolou Capital Management, backed Bill Ackman's call for President Trump to pause his tariff rollout.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00When you talk about doing everything all at once and how that just can't happen,
00:05you used in your video a really interesting example of an Intel factory.
00:09And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that because you say you
00:13agree with the president in in some of these cases, but the idea of reshoring so
00:18much business production and manufacturing in the U.S., that is
00:21something that takes time. Can you talk about the average timelines that would
00:25be more reasonable and perhaps wouldn't cause such a market reaction?
00:29So the president said that we will have all these factors up and running in one
00:34and a half to two years. It's just factually, it's impossible. I'll give a
00:38good example. The previous president, President Biden, as part of his Chips
00:43Act, gave a massive subsidy to Intel, the American chip manufacturer, to build
00:48one, one chip factory in Ohio. One. Okay. They started, broke ground February of
00:562022. You know when that's going to be complete? As of their last guidance to
01:00Wall Street, Q4 of 2030. We're talking almost nine years to build one factory.
01:08Granted, chips are a little bit more complicated than let's say building,
01:12let's say, you know, a t-shirt manufacturing plant. But nonetheless, it
01:18just shows the gravity. One plant could take a decade. To say that we can somehow
01:23do this in two years is just, it's so irresponsible for somebody to say
01:27something like that. And beyond that, I think this is exactly what Wall Street
01:32is anxious about. Not just the breadth of the tariffs. This is completely
01:37unreasonable. This is so easily disprovable what they are talking about.
01:41That, you know, we're losing credibility every time we make a comment like this
01:46out in the public. And then to answer your next question, in terms of the
01:52timeline, it really would vary. But I mean, think about anyone that's even built a
01:58single-family home in the United States. There's delays. There's permitting. Prices
02:03go up. Vendors quit in the middle. You have to find new ones. Best-case
02:09scenario. The best-case scenario, which is not gonna happen, but if it did happen,
02:13we'd be looking minimum five to seven years. A more realistic scenario, if you
02:17were to ask me, is 10 to 12 years. And I've seen some credible people, but they
02:21are bearish. They've said it's gonna take a full generation. It's gonna take 25 years.
02:25I mean, look how long it took Germany to be built after World War II. It didn't
02:28happen overnight. It took 20 years. Those are some sobering numbers. So I do
02:34have to ask. Bill Ackman said over the weekend that he's calling on the White
02:39House to institute a 90-day pause, just a timeout, to lower the temperature and,
02:45I think, to better negotiate some of these terms. Would a 90-day timeout in
02:51this situation help at all, given some of those timelines that you just outlined?
02:55Anything at this point would help. 90 days would help. 30 days would help. 60
03:03days would help. A full year would help. Anything would help. I agree with Bill
03:07Ackman here. We have to pause this because this is going to go into effect
03:12in under 36 hours from now. The world economy will be shut down. You
03:18cannot put a 50% tariff on every country we depend on for exports and expect that
03:24to not be inflationary and anti-growth immediately. This is an emergency.
03:30So I agree with Bill. Some delay, just for some clarity. We have to understand how
03:36you actually expect us to do this. How do we replace the tomatoes and avocados
03:41from Mexico that Walmart depends on to sell their produce? How do we replace
03:46seafood from Japan immediately? These are not political
03:50questions. These are simple, basic human questions and I hope that cooler heads
03:55will prevail in the White House because, frankly, they have to.