Nelson Peltz continues to praise what Donald Trump will do for the country. Even if, so far, Trump’s victory hasn’t paid off for Peltz or his investors.
Peltz, a hedge fund manager and activist investor, has seen one of his biggest holdings Mondelez (MDLZ), drop 10% since Trump was elected president. Trump has attacked the maker of Chips Ahoy! and other snack foods for cutting some jobs in Chicago and moving some of these positions to Mexico. Peltz has characterized Trump’s criticizm of Mondelez as misguided.
Nonetheless, on CNBC on Monday, Peltz said he still believes that Trump will be good for the U.S. economy, and bring back jobs that have gone overseas.
“If he gets the kind of tax reductions he’s talking about, we will wind up having more employment, more companies coming back to the United States,” said Peltz, whose activist fund Trian Management has pushed for cost cuts (which has resulted job cuts) in companies such as DuPont (DD) and PepsiCo (PEP). Trian is also one of the biggest shareholders of Mondelez.
Trump’s has announced plans to cut corporate taxes from around 35% to 15% in a bid to discourage businesses from moving their operations and profits abroad into tax havens.
“I think the Trump rally is celebrating that capitalism is back,” Peltz said.
Peltz’s comments come after Trump announced a deal with air-conditioning maker, Carrier, on Thursday, that kept 1,000 of the companies jobs in the U.S in return for state tax breaks. The company, like Mondelez, was criticized by Trump on the campaign trail for planning to move over 2,000 jobs to Mexico.
On Monday, Peltz once again dismissed Trump’s criticism of Mondelez as uninformed. Peltz said on CNBC that 75% of Mondelez’s sales are outside the U.S. He said it was silly to think that Mondelez won’t have workers outside the U.S. as well.
