Foreign Affairs

Billionaire Activist Investor Suggests Poaching Russian Workers To Fight Inflation

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As inflation remains stubbornly near record highs, billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman suggested a Russian “talent drain” as one strategy to combat inflation without necessitating more interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

In a series of tweets, the Pershing Square CEO outlined his belief that raising interest rates is a “very blunt tool,” which would likely not do much to impact wage inflation. The activist investor argued that immigration would help stem wage inflation by increasing supply of laborers in the market, suggesting that the U.S. government poach “talented Russians,” simultaneously damaging Russia’s future and saving Russian citizens from “an unjust war.”

“Doesn’t it make more sense to moderate wage inflation with increased immigration than by raising rates, destroying demand, putting people out of work, and causing a recession?” asked Ackman. “And if we can target immigration policy to achieve important political objectives like catalyzing a Russian talent drain to the US, why shouldn’t we?”

Why don’t we reduce the @federalreserve need to raise rates by expanding immigration now? Let’s remove the barriers for Russia’s brightest. The most talented Russians must leave now before they become fodder in an unjust war.Doing so saves our economy and destroys Russia’s future

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 23, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin partially mobilized 300,000 reserve and special operations forces on Wednesday in a speech threatening that the country would be willing to use nuclear weapons to defend itself. Protests erupted across the country, leading to more than 1,200 arrests as fears of a broader draft mounted.

Ackman was supportive of Fed policy early in September, before August’s inflation data showed higher-than-expected inflation at 8.3%, predicting that the Fed’s actions would result in inflation falling to around 4% over the next year, according to Business Insider. In May, he warned that only aggressive Fed action or an economic crash would halt inflation.

The activist investor’s recommendation comes as the stock market has tumbled for four days in a row, with the Dow Jones hitting its lowest levels since June. Goldman Sachs analysts warned late Thursday that most equities investors considered it “inevitable” that the Fed’s current aggressive policies would lead to a recession and damage the labor market.

Ackman’s suggestion comes as the U.S. is currently dealing with a record-breaking number of migrants at the southern border, with 2 million encounters recorded by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in fiscal year 2022. Encounters with Russian migrants comprised slightly more than 32,500 of the nearly 2.5 million encounters nationwide, according to CBP.

Pershing Square declined a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.