'We're Going To Lose Trading Partners, We're Going To Lose Allies': Trump Tariffs Ripped By Founder

2 days ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," Spencer Hakimian, founder and chief investment officer of hedge fund Tolou Capital Management, slammed President Trump's tariff rollout.

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Transcript

00:00trading opened, you posted a video to social media saying you were looking at how badly futures were

00:06down at the time. And of course, markets opened. Monday trading also in the red. But you said,

00:11we are risking an economic catastrophe like nothing we've ever seen before.

00:15Worse than 08, worse than the beginning of COVID. Why do you say this?

00:20Like me, it's fairly obvious. I mean, we cannot arbitrarily reroute and rework global supply

00:28chains, global trade. These are things that are literally almost a century in the making. And to

00:33think that we can somehow just magically change all of this over a single weekend, while the

00:39president gulfs, frankly, I just do not think this is possible. And I think we're being extremely,

00:45extremely careless with our economy. And the consequences are going to be felt by people that

00:52unfortunately may start losing their jobs, just as we saw in Detroit over the weekend as

00:56Atlanta started laying off people. So I say we risk an economic catastrophe, first, because I don't

01:03even agree with the idea of what we're doing. But second, because even if I did agree with it,

01:08the pace and the utter chaos of it will almost certainly lead the economy into a recession. You

01:15can talk to any small business you want right now. Nothing's happening. If they are relying on

01:20exports, they cannot function under this. What do we think is going to happen to them? So that's why

01:26I made that deal. There's a lot to dive into from what you just said, but let's talk about with the

01:32tariffs. They're sweeping. It is dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. And the White House has even

01:38said some 50 countries have already contacted the Oval Office to negotiate. As you look at what President

01:44Trump announced, are there certain countries, certain tariffs that you see as more damaging to the U.S.

01:51economy than others? Or is it just the breadth of what we're seeing that's so damaging?

01:57But of course, there are some tariffs that are a lot more damaging. And I just want to go back to

02:03that video I made. I just want to clarify, I agree with the President on some of these tariffs.

02:09I agree that we should not be 100% reliant on India, China and Ireland for pharmaceutical

02:15manufacturing. I agree that high-end chips should most likely not only be made in Vietnam.

02:21Where I passionately disagree is, are we really going to fight to bring back sock manufacturing from

02:27Cambodia? Are we really going to fight to bring back sneaker production from Vietnam? Are these things

02:34worth fighting over? And, you know, we are stretching ourselves thin. You know, if we want to go out China

02:41over some unfair trade practices, which they uncertainly do. If we want to even go after,

02:47let's say, Germany, where they may be unfairly tariffing our auto companies more than we're

02:51tariffing, let's say, Volkswagen, fine. But to be going after everybody at the same time, so much that

02:58we're tariffing countries that don't have humans on it. I mean, it's almost impossible not to laugh when

03:04we talk about this. This has to get more measured. This has to get more targeted. There has to be a clear

03:11legitimate plan. It has to be spoken with, with big business leaders, with small business leaders.

03:16There has to be some type of message conveyed that we are doing this. We're doing X for Y.

03:23To simply just pull out a chart that looked like a high schooler made and to say we're tariffing every

03:27country in the world based on some arbitrary numbers that we made up. This is insanity. We're

03:32going to lose trading partners. We're going to lose allies. People that want to work with the United

03:38States are going to have no choice but to gravitate towards China. Is that what we want? Does that

03:42make us stronger? Does that make them weaker? It does not make sense to me.

'We're Going To Lose Trading Partners, We're Going To Lose Allies': Trump Tariffs Ripped By Founder

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