Billionaire investor Bill Ackman defends Donald Trump's tariff play

His view is worth reading, even if you don't agree. (I don't agree.)

If you don’t know who Bill Ackman is, you should.

Ackman is among the world’s wealthiest investors, with a net worth around $10 billion (only the insane scope of fortunes like Elon Musk’s keeps that figure from seeming as oversized as it is). He owns a $91 million penthouse atop one of the “super-tall” skyscrapers in Billionaire’s Row on 57th Street in Manhattan.

But that’s not why you should know him.

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(Pay for me, get Ackman for free!)

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In 2023, Ackman became infuriated at the hypocrisy of fancy American universities who would do anything to protect the feelings of their snowflake students from hurtful speech —except if those students were Jews.

After the disastrous Dec. 5, 2023 Congressional hearing when the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews might violate their community standards and free speech codes, Ackman went on the attack, using X to great effect. His long, passionate, closely argued posts on the issue were seen hundreds of millions of times.

His impact became clear when The New York Times came after him with an article headlined Bill Ackman’s Campaign Against Harvard Followed Years of Resentment. (When the personal attacks come, you know you’re winning.) Within weeks, the presidents of Harvard and MIT had resigned.

Now Ackman has 1.7 million followers on X. Aside from Musk himself, he is one of the most important executives or investors on social media. He endorsed President Trump last July, shortly after the Pennsylvania assassination attempt.

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But in a post on X on Sunday, Ackman sharply criticized Trump for his proposed tariffs, writing:

Business is a confidence game. The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for…

As you know — and as I wrote on Monday — I largely agree with that view.

Yesterday afternoon, with stocks down almost 15 percent in a week and bonds under growing pressure, Trump suddenly suspended the tariffs, aside from his 10 percent base tariffs, on goods from every country but China. Simultaneously, he raised Chinese tariffs to 125 percent.

The conventional legacy media wisdom, which in this case I share, is that Trump capitulated to the financial and business pressure and — fortunately — backed off a disastrous plan.

But Ackman didn’t see it that way.

In a tweet yesterday afternoon which 12.7 million people have viewed, he called the reversal “brilliantly executed.” This led me to pull-quote Ackman’s tweet and tell him not to “kiss [Trump’s] ass.” (Gee, I wonder why Ackman is a billionaire, and I’m an outcast journalist my former employers at the New York Times would rather did not exist.)

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Somewhat to my surprise, Ackman responded at length to my jab, explaining exactly why he thought Trump’s play was so good.

I do not agree with his take. But given the fact he took the time to answer, I decided to repost what he had to say on X — and asked him if I could repost it here too for Unreported Truths readers who might have missed it. Ackman quickly agreed. (Again, the man understands public relations and social media in a way few billionaires do.)

I could explain why I think he’s wrong in more detail, and maybe I will at some point, but this isn’t the space for that. This is Ackman’s time to speak, not mine.

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So, without further ado, here’s a top investor’s take on why Trump’s gamesmanship the last week should be viewed as a success:

It’s not an ass kiss.

If I were president, I would have started with a 90-day period for negotiations and then brought the hammer down.

By doing it President Trump’s way, the entire world and their citizens got to experience the visceral impact of what massive tariffs would do to their businesses, their stock and bond markets, and their economies.

We were able to learn who are the preferred trade partners and who are the problems, based on who showed up early and what they offered, and who chose to retaliate. Every country is now incredibly motivated to make a deal with us as quickly as possible to avoid the draconian consequences they will experience with no deal.

China has been isolated as a bad actor and every American company is immediately moving their supply chains out of China back to the U.S. or to trading partners of the U.S. who are likely to make favorable tariff deals with the U.S. Time is not China’s friend.

As more time goes by, more companies find other and better alternative suppliers outside of China. So China is incentivized to come to the table soon and to be reasonable in their negotiations.

The countries that showed up first and offered zero tariffs will now be rewarded with more business, motivating them to complete their deals with us promptly. All of the above was accomplished with only a few days of market turbulence.

Some have questioned whether this was Trump’s strategy all along. We may never know. I instead focus on the outcome. Looking at the facts objectively, the only word that comes to my mind is ‘brilliant.’