WHEN: Today, Tuesday, October 21, 2025
WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Tuesday, October 21. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/10/21/pershing-square-ceo-bill-ackman-trump-is-the-most-pro-business-president-weve-ever-had.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/10/21/bill-ackman-i-wish-we-had-a-better-relationship-with-china.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/10/21/bill-ackman-zohran-mamdani-is-accurate-in-identifying-nycs-problems-but-his-policies-are-wrong.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Welcome back to "Squawk Box." Election day here in New York City is just two weeks away. It's become a national conversation. Joining us right now is a discussion about the mayoral race, the markets, the economy, and so much more, Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman is here. Good morning to you.
BILL ACKMAN: Good morning.
SORKIN: You have been quite outspoken on X and elsewhere about this mayoral race. A lot of folks around the country looking at New York as a proxy for what the Democratic Party even looks like. You've been calling on Sliwa to get out of the race. You've been calling on all sorts of things to happen. Right now, in terms of where you think things actually are, based on what the numbers are. We've been looking at Polymarket and other things, and it seems like Zohran Mamdani is the clear favorite, not just the clear favorite, but that almost, almost any under any circumstance, he's going to win at this point.
ACKMAN: Remember, Polymarket is probability wins the election based on the facts that exist now. Probably accurate. However, if Sliwa were to say, I'm not going to run. Right now, the polls are 43, most recent poll is 43 -- 44 Mamdani, 23 -- I'm sorry, 33, Cuomo, and 19 Sliwa. I've seen polls that say the Sliwa voters are going to vote 65 percent to -- for Andrew, 7 percent other, and 25 percent won't vote, something like this. But if Sliwa voters vote for Andrew, Andrew wins. The key is Sliwa has to be out of the race.
SORKIN: And to Sliwa not only have to get out of the race, and we were looking at the front page of "The New York Post" this morning, which was also calling for that. If he -- does he have to get out of the race and endorse Cuomo?
ACKMAN: He doesn't have to do, look, I think the smartest thing he could do for his legacy is to say, look, I love New York. I care about this city. I've put a lot of energy in keeping this city safe. You know, the polls, the facts just tell me I'm not going to win this time. I'm going to step aside. You know, I'm going to rely on Andrew to take care of the city. I'm going to keep doing my job protecting New Yorkers, and I'm going to run in four years. And then we'll build, like we'll have a gold statue of him in Times Square. And I know actually a guy offered to pay for a gold statue of him.
SORKIN: Right. Let me ask you this—
ACKMAN: Gold, by the way, is, has gone up in value.
BECKY QUICK: So, it's expensive.
SORKIN: Let me ask you this. We've had Cuomo on the broadcast. We've asked Zohran to come on. He has not come on yet.
ACKMAN: There's a reason for that.
SORKIN: And there's an invitation that's still standing, by the way, if you're watching.
ACKMAN: Here's what you should do. You should go to the DSA website. It says the capitalist economic system is the cause of violence, unemployment and a climate crisis poses an existential threat to life on earth.
QUICK: That's the Democratic socialist?
ACKMAN: That's the DSA, which is Zohran's policy. How can he come on CNBC?
SORKIN: So, my question to you, though, is when you look at sort of the one, number one, two and three issues that you have with him, and I am assuming that your vote for Cuomo is effectively a vote against him.
ACKMAN: It is.
SORKIN: Right?
ACKMAN: And I like Andrew.
SORKIN: What are the issues for you? Is it about capitalism? Is it about policing in the city? Is it about antisemitism? I mean, give me, give me the list, but in the true priority, because I think there's a lot of people who think that maybe you're in this because you don't want your taxes raised.
ACKMAN: Okay. So, number one, I love New York. I love New York City. It's been very good to me. I care about this place. It's one of the greatest cities in the world. But it has issues. Okay. Where is Mamdani right? He's right that we have an affordability issue here. Okay. Why do we have an affordability issue in New York? Rent is too high, right? Utility costs are too high. Why is that? Right? The answer is because of policies that he wants to make worse, right? Real estate developers would love to build more apartments in New York. There's enormous demand, right? Economics. If we increase, there are not enough supply to meet the demand, so what happens is rents go up. Right? Why is that? Because we make it one extremely difficult to build in New York. All kinds of regulatory other not in my backyard protests, things that drive up costs that make it uneconomic to build new housing. Then there's rent regulation, right? If you -- if you're telling people we're going to freeze rents -- well, number one, you can only freeze rents on a million, maybe apartments, not the other 25 percent of the housing stock, not the other 75 percent of the housing stock. We've got 50,000 apartments that sit vacant because the owner can't economically afford to renovate them because they can't earn a return on the incremental capital they put in. If you look at places like Argentina, which deregulated, you know, rent control, rents come down because supply comes back into the market. Some supply comes in immediately, apartments that are being held off, and then developers start building. What you want in New York is you want cranes everywhere, building apartments. And that's going to drive down -- that's going to keep rents from growing at a rate in excess of inflation. So, affordability is a problem. Why are electricity costs so high? Because of Green New Deal, because of people fighting power lines, because of people, you know, shutting down, you know, natural gas, nuclear power plants. And that has caused the cost of -- we're going to have all this. We have all this demand from AI, of course, for power. That's made it more expensive for people. So, he's right on affordability, but his policies are wrong. So that's -- that's an important issue. Another important issue is public safety, right? The mayor actually probably has more impact on public safety, that's probably the most important issue for many, for most New Yorkers. And if he has a hostile relationship with the police department—
SORKIN: Right.
ACKMAN: Okay. You're already are reading stories about people retiring in advance of Mamdani being mayor. You know, he's, you know, if you look at what he said prior to the last few months of running for mayor, he was a defund the police. The police are wicked. The police are evil. You know, these are his words, his tweets, you know, in sort of in the record. That's not a guy who's going to be able to motivate the police. He's talked about, you know, shutting down Rikers, right? You know, that's -- so I would say affordability, safety. His policies are wrong. His -- he's accurate in identifying the problems with the city—
SORKIN: Right.
ACKMAN: But his policies are going to destroy the city.
SORKIN: Explain why you think in your mind --
ACKMAN: Yes.
SORKIN: He is doing as well as he is, on track to become the next mayor of this city.
ACKMAN: He's very talented politician. He's charming. He's got a nice smile. Now, I would argue if you watched him in the debate, every time he answered a question, he'd finish with his smile. You know, it's a constructed smile and it makes me not trust the guy.
SORKIN: So here we are having this conversation. He now uses you and your name almost as a proxy—
ACKMAN: Yes.
SORKIN: To suggest why he should win. Which is to say, interestingly, when you talk to especially younger people, they say if the real estate industry, for example, if my boss hates him and doesn't want him to win, I want him to win because I think that he's, you know, going to help me.
ACKMAN: And they're going to come to regret that. I mean, if you -- 1 percent -- is just a editorial in "The Wall Street Journal" this morning, 1 percent of New Yorkers pay 40 percent of the taxes in the city. And if you attack that 1 percent, those are the most mobile 1 percent of New Yorkers, and they can live 183 days outside of the city, and they can take their tax revenues elsewhere.
QUICK: You've, you've stayed here. You've been in New York.
ACKMAN: Yes, I have.
QUICK: Would this be the thing that pushed you out of the city?
ACKMAN: Look, what I would say is putting me aside, it's a marginal cost decision for everyone who's in New York City. And you weigh the benefits of living here for 183 days of the year versus the costs.
SORKIN: Right.
ACKMAN: One of the costs is taxes, and not just personal taxes. Personal income taxes are going to go up. I think the bigger issue is he's talking about taking corporate income taxes for business located in New York City to 21 percent. That's before you get to federal, right? And, you know, a CEO is a fiduciary for the, you know, the shareholders of the company. And if you can locate the business in Miami and eliminate 21 percentage points of corporate tax is going to do that, right? So, you know, the, matching New Jersey and forgetting that there's also New York City, you know, New York City and New York state, you know, taxes here, it's just, it's going to destroy the city.
JOE KERNEN: There are national Republicans. They like New York, but they don't live here. And they think Republicans win the midterms if this guy gets elected and becomes that -- the Democrats have a real problem, whether they endorse this guy or whether they accept him, because it's just acknowledging all these things that they know don't work, and they're afraid, they're so feckless that they can't say we don't agree with any of that stuff.
ACKMAN: You're right. And I think the Republicans are being shortsighted about this, because I think there are follow on implications for the rest of the country. If Mamdani is successful in New York, he's going to inspire other candidates.
KERNEN: Successful in winning.
ACKMAN: And winning, winning, can inspire other DSA candidates at the state legislature in other states around the country.
KERNEN: We'll know where the Democrat Party actually is—
ACKMAN: So, you're right. If we destroy New York, it will -- it will set a bad example. Right, but the problem is—
KERNEN: Maybe it's the sacrificial lamb—
ACKMAN: Yeah.
KERNEN: To out the current state of the Democratic Party and where the geographic center of that is.
ACKMAN: It's the current state of the Democratic Party. And by the way, if I were a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party, I would be very concerned about this as well, because it's, you know, the party has veered.
KERNEN: What happened to your card?
ACKMAN: What's that?
KERNEN: What happened to that card?
ACKMAN: I never really had. I was always—
KERNEN: I know. I'm kidding.
ACKMAN: First of all, I was always a centrist, to be super clear.
KERNEN: You were pretty woke. You were pretty woke for a while. Yes.
ACKMAN: I was never woke.
KERNEN: In my view. And now we're like simpatico.
ACKMAN: Pretty clear—
KERNEN: I left the lights on and you came home.
ACKMAN: Okay, there you go. Thank you. And thank you for welcoming me. But in all seriousness, this is -- New York City is the most important econ -- one of the most economic --
KERNEN: No, I agree with you—
ACKMAN: For the country, right? President Trump is concerned about New York city.
KERNEN: And he in his own way, that would be an unbelievable foil for him, Mamdani.
ACKMAN: It's terrible for New York.
QUICK: Yeah, but I don't think he wants it, I don't think—
SORKIN: Look, you don't think the National Guard is coming here the day after the election? I do.
ACKMAN: Well, if—
KERNEN: It came—
ACKMAN: If we're -- if we're shutting down Rikers and there are criminals roaming the streets and people are getting -- you know, we become Chicago—
SORKIN: Yeah.
ACKMAN: We should have the National Guard here.
SORKIN: So let me ask you a different question, which is to the extent that there's two weeks left and you would like to see Cuomo win, I think you not just have to convince Sliwa to get out of the election. You effectively have to try to persuade some of the voters that would otherwise vote for Mamdani to vote for Cuomo.
ACKMAN: No. All we need to do is get out the vote. Okay, here are a few interesting facts. Typical mayoral election, what percentage of the registered voters vote? It's like 23—
SORKIN: De minimis amount.
ACKMAN: Twenty or 24 percent. Right? So, if all you do is you say to people, this is the most important New York City election we've had in over 100 years, okay? And it's -- it's not -- not underestimating the facts here. And all you need to do is get out of bed in the morning, okay? And show up at the poll. You're already registered. Vote. Vote for safety in the city. Vote for sanity. Vote for a place where businesses want to locate and, you know, keep jobs, bring jobs. New York's actually -- you know, people underestimate Adams. He actually did a pretty good job. And the city is economically in a pretty good place. People are actually coming back to the office again after COVID.
QUICK: Why hasn't Adams endorsed Cuomo?
ACKMAN: He should. He should. He should endorse Cuomo. I don't know—
SORKIN: Does it matter?
ACKMAN: On again, on the margin everything matters. But getting people out to vote, that's the most important thing they could do. By the way, every CEO of every company in New York City should say to their employees, I'm giving you, you know, election day, take, come in, come in after lunch. But vote, vote for the future of New York City. We don't want a socialist candidate who believes in seizing the means of production. His words, right, on a video. Right? This is what he believes. He's kind of modified. He's mollified some of his beliefs.
SORKIN: What do you tell, what do you tell the people who say, look, you know what, the mayor can't do that much anyway?
ACKMAN: The mayor can do a lot. If you care about safety in New York, the mayor, first of all, he's not committed to keeping Jessica Tisch, who's done an excellent job. Right? Why is he not committed to keeping her? Because he knows if he says he's not keeping her, he's going to lose votes. But he's not going to keep her. There's no way. He's going to bring in his own person on crime, and we're going to see more crime.
SORKIN: Let me ask you a slightly different question before we get to the markets and everything else, what do you think? You know, this city has been the financial center of the universe for a very long time. Do you think that would shift if he was the mayor? And I ask because Jamie Dimon just opened up a beautiful new headquarters and has invested an enormous amount of money here. And so there is this view, especially among Mamdani supporters who say nobody's going anywhere. Everybody says they're so mobile, but look at what's happened. These buildings are here. They're going to be here for a very long time. Maybe a couple people move here and there. The city is going to be fine. I'm just—
ACKMAN: The problem with that analysis. Look, I think JPMorgan is going to have a meaningful presence in New York City. But also, look, if you focus on hedge funds for a moment, hedge funds are a very important taxpayer. And the employees who work for them in New York City, they're the most mobile businesses in the world. Ken Griffin left Chicago because he was upset about everything from crime, you know, people getting killed on the streets to the way that dysfunction, the way that city was run. And he went to Miami. And Miami's becoming a financial capital, and it's becoming a more desirable place to live. And they're opening, you know, more -- a lot of the New York City restaurants have opened, you know, duplicate examples there. You know, the weather is very good most months of the year. And, you know, I don't think JPMorgan is going to leave in the next four years. And, you know, no. Do I think many hedge funds will go, many financial services businesses? I mean, the, what happened post-COVID, post-COVID, people figured out that they could actually do a lot by Zoom. And that made it a lot easier to, you know, it used to be you had to be physically in New York. You could go to a meeting and see someone. Zoom, you know, it's still good to see people in person, but a lot of meetings that you used to do in person, you now do by Zoom, which makes other places like Miami much more viable, Palm Beach, etc.
SORKIN: You've been asking for a conversation, a meeting on X with the person who may very well become the next mayor, unsuccessfully. Do you ask that, I mean, I imagine you're asking it genuinely, but do you believe that he would correspond with you?
ACKMAN: Well, look, the guys attacked me personally, so I'm like, okay, let's have a real conversation. Are you afraid to have a discussion with me on X, an open mic discussion where I can ask you about your policies and I can challenge you about your policies? Why not? As opposed to, you know, having, you know, I would say open mic, give me a couple of hours and let's understand who you really are. I'd love to do that. The fact that he's unwilling to do that, he's not responded to do that, I think, speaks. He's afraid to do so.
SORKIN: While we have you here, got to ask you about your take on just where we are in this economy and where we are in the markets.
ACKMAN: Sure.
SORKIN: What do you think we keep talking about? You know, we say there's a bubble in conversations around a bubble.
ACKMAN: Yeah, I would say there's a lot of positive -- let me be optimistic for a moment. I'm negative on New York if Mamdani's elected, but I'm positive on the country. You know, clearly, we have the most pro-business president we've had in a very long time. And we also have a lot of, you know, very significant things that have been announced. But the effects have not yet really taken effect. So, one infrastructure bill from the past, we have the more recent tax bill, which gives 100 percent depreciation for investment. We have this massive AI, you know, infrastructure investment that's like building the railroads of the, you know, the early part of the 20th century. We have the productivity effects of AI that are only just starting to, you know, have significant effect. We have interest rates coming down meaningfully. The 10-year is below, you know, 4 percent. We have a Fed that's accommodative, likely to sort of cut interest rates. You know, so, these are all, I would say, very positive for the economy and for markets.
KERNEN: Well, there's a time when I think you wouldn't have called Trump the most pro-business president. When a lot of people were worried about tariffs, a lot of people were worried about tariffs obviously in April. Is it that those tariffs never really came? The worst-case scenario obviously didn't happen, and probably, at this point, most people think they're unlikely to happen.
ACKMAN: No, actually, I think of -- I think Trump has been the most pro-business president we've ever had—
KERNEN: But there's even a chance we're going to hurt the markets at one point.
ACKMAN: I was a little bit concerned about the, you know, the scale of the tariffs and how quickly they were about to be implemented.
KERNEN: Yeah.
ACKMAN: My suggestion to the president was to take a 90-day pause. And to his credit, he, you know, he mollified that, modified that position. And—
KERNEN: He is pro-business, even though people say these tariffs—
ACKMAN: By the way, he's -- he doesn't care if the stock market goes down in the short term. He cares in the long term. And I trust the president and I think he's done an excellent job.
QUICK: What about—
ACKMAN: I think he's also done an excellent job. By the way, the other factors that affect markets—
KERNEN: Yeah.
ACKMAN: Are kind of geopolitical risk. And geopolitical risk is coming down, right?
KERNEN: Yeah.
ACKMAN: The whole Middle East -- the Middle East has been reset.
KERNEN: If it wasn't Donald Trump, I don't know what his approval would be, if he wasn't Donald Trump, given, if you look—
ACKMAN: If you actually objectively look at his accomplishments, it's been an incredible presidency.
QUICK: What about the Chinese trade talks that are coming up again, because we are reaching the end of that kind of extended pause?
ACKMAN: You can't bet against the president and his ability to negotiate deals. I mean, you can't. And -- I mean, this -- the Middle East, you know, the Israel-Gaza situation, you know, a peace dividend from the Middle East could be massive, right? We have these countries with incredible resources. Only thing holding back the Middle East has been Iran, terrorism, you know, the sort of axis of evil. The axis of evil has taken a major, major blow. And I think that's a great -- you know, that brings down risk premium sort of globally. So again, I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the world.
SORKIN: Where are you on the relationship with China?
ACKMAN: I wish we had a better relationship with China.
SORKIN: You do?
ACKMAN: Absolutely. I think I think it's really unfortunate that, you know, two of the most important -- two most important powers in the world are at loggerheads. And I just think, you know, we should -- we should make peace with China. I think that would be very, very good. That would be that would be an incredible white swan, let's put it that way.
SORKIN: Let me ask you a slightly different question about maybe capitalism on a different front, which is this administration has been uniquely taking stakes in businesses they're interested in, you know, switching grants potentially at universities to effectively take stakes in patents and all sorts of things. What do you think of that?
ACKMAN: What I think is that the United States allowed other countries to control, use the Mamdani term, the means of production—
SORKIN: Right.
ACKMAN: And make the United States vulnerable, whether it was chip manufacturing or, you know, active pharmaceutical ingredients, or, you know, rare earths. And that created a lot of vulnerability for the country. And I think what the president is doing is trying to solve that problem by, you know, enhancing the competitive position of Intel and sort of anointing these companies. You know, if Intel failed -- and by the way, if you look at a stock price chart of Intel, it was on a very negative trajectory for the business. That's a, that's a threat to the country.
KERNEN: Not a perfect way to do things, obviously, picking, I mean, maybe Intel should have failed.
ACKMAN: I think that would be, been a mistake.
KERNEN: Right.
ACKMAN: But again—
KERNEN: You know—
ACKMAN: First of all, What the Biden administration did is it gave money to Intel.
KERNEN: Right.
ACKMAN: What Trump said is, you know, I want to, I want to get a return on my investment.
KERNEN: So, picking winners and losers. Solar, Sol -- I mean, picking any, you know, renewables or electric cars, none of that stuff.
ACKMAN: Yeah. Look, I think you should be cautious about the government stepping in and becoming a capitalist force. At the same time, if the government is going to provide some form of subsidy to an industry, getting something back so the taxpayer gets the return on the investment, I think is a very smart strategy.
SORKIN : AI, this AI boom?
ACKMAN: Yes. It's incredible.
SORKIN: Incredible—
ACKMAN: Incredible for the world.
SORKIN: As long as the eye can see or -- I mean, do you think that it's indiscriminate spending?
ACKMAN: Think about—
SORKIN: Do you think that it's—
ACKMAN: I think it's again, it's a bit like the railroads, it's a bit like fiber. The worst-case scenario is we have excess capacity. But I think what we've seen is -- I mean, intelligence is not something that you're ever going to have excess capacity for. So, if and when we achieve AGI, right, this is a lollapalooza effect for the world. We're going to, you know, we'll enable us to -- we're already starting to see impacts on, you know, cancer discovery. And you know, so imagine a world where we can, you know, address every disease.
SORKIN: Right.
ACKMAN: Right? Imagine a world where we can, you know, the power of superintelligence is worth a meaningful investment. You know, will some of this money, will some companies go bust? For sure. But I wouldn't have bet against, you know—
KERNEN: I'm not laughing at, I'm—
ACKMAN: The Alphabets of the world have the resources to make these investments, and run a profitable business.
KERNEN: For Andrew, I was going to call -- I was going to call "The Post", that New York paper. I won't do that, obviously. We know the Gray Lady. But they do say this effect, be an angel and go away, Curtis. And then they say, for the sake of the city you love so deeply, Curtis, please swallow this bitter pill and drop out.
ACKMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think—
KERNEN: That's a pretty good.
ACKMAN: I respect the guy, okay? I have nothing against him. I know he cares about the city.
KERNEN: He's not going to win. So, what's—
ACKMAN: Like all he is doing right now is handing the city— to Mamdani. It's an ego thing. I don't know what he's thinking. Okay? By the way, if he were at, whatever, 31 percent, and Cuomo were at 19, I'd be supporting him.
KERNEN: The slightest chance. But do you understand Perot or -- I mean, people do this. Look what's happened over the years in the national elections.
ACKMAN: Yeah, I -- this is—
KERNEN: Jill, whatever her name was -- Stein.
ACKMAN: Remember, he's -- it's not the first time he's running for office. He lost to Adams. He got 28 percent of the vote against Adams. So, he's -- he's already failed to become mayor in a much less competitive situation.
SORKIN: Bill Ackman, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. Really appreciate.
ACKMAN: Vote.
SORKIN: It's great to see you.
ACKMAN: Incredibly important election. If you're a CEO, let your workers, let your employees --
KERNEN: Early and often.
ACKMAN: And by the way, yeah, vote early. Critically important election.
KERNEN: Early and often.
ACKMAN: Really important for New York.
KERNEN: You don't need an ID.
ACKMAN: For public safety, for business here, for the -- for the country.
KERNEN: From New Jersey, I'm going to vote.
ACKMAN: For the country, for the future of the country. We do not want a socialist leading the most important financial city in the country. We don't want.
SORKIN: Bill Ackman—
ACKMAN: And he wants to seize the means of production. Okay? This is bad stuff.
SORKIN: Thank you, sir.
ACKMAN: Thank you.
SORKIN: Great to see you.