great ideas. don't forget to follow us on twitter @barron's online. wear your masks, be healthy, and we'll see you next week ♪ >> 23r-9 fox studios in new york city, this is maria bartiromo's "wall street." maria: happy weekend, everyone. welcome to the program that analyzes the week that was and helps position you for the week ahead. i'm maria bartiromo. coming up in just a few moments, starwood capital group ceo and chairman barry sternlick my special guest, joining me to talk about the reopening ott american economy. and later on, eric edwards joins me to talk about bringing drug manufacturing back to the united states, taking the supply chains out of china. but first, americans are slowly getting back to work as all 50 states are now open in some

capacity, some states requiring that visitors and residents who are returning from other states self-quarantine before they actually enter that state. joining me now to talk about the reopening of america and the real and permanent changes to the country that we can expect is the chairman and ceo of the starwood capital group, barry, always a pleasure to see you. thanks for joining us this weekend. >> great to be with you. maria: so now we've got all 50 states open in some capacity. i know you were out and about this weekend. what can you tell us? assess this first week of the reopening. how do you see it? >> you know, i was on tv march 13th, and i was fairly bullish on the speed of the recovery. and everything i've seen only reinforces that. so i've been taking weekend drives -- i'm in miami right now where i've spent my covid quarantine -- [laughter] but i've driven to naples, and i was up in georgia the weekend before last, and i've been in northern palm beach. the island of palm beach only

has, like, 23, 30 cases. so the impact of covid has almost been zip code by zip code, and people are very much ready to get back to things. we probably underestimated the pent-up demand. i think the facts are also coming out, and they're sort of indisputable. this is not impacting 0-40-year-olds. whether they get sick or not is one thing, but almost infinitesimal numbers are dying, and 40% of the deaths are in nursing homes and mostly people with preconditions. the other thing that's obviously happened is the optimism around a vaccine. and i think people are feeling things will be okay x they're watching real data from real countries like all over europe where cases are declining rapidly. i found out from my friends in london that they had no new cases in london for three days and now maybe it's ten. so this will end. and it was a version of a flu, far more toxic to the elderly.

but i think the rest of the nation sort of wants to get back to it. i was talking with some friends the other day in the state of missouri, there were 500 or so deaths, and 250 of them were in nursing homes so they closed the state for 250 deaths. and while humanitarian, the i really care, it's hard to imagine that you spent $6 trillion, you know, to keep the markets afloat and to support the country and maybe we might have overdone it a little bit, in my opinion, particularly for the kids who were going to get immunity. i'm sure you know people and i have friends who actually tested positive for the antibody, but their wives and children never got sick and don't have the antibodies. so the denominator was much bigger than people thought, so, you know, the infection rate and the death rate is much lower than people thought. but how this translates into the economy, i will also tell you in georgia, i was in southern georgia, they're out and about. they're not obeying many protocols, frankly. and they're very healthy. the case loads have held fairly

constant. i think large gatherings are probably a no-no, and i think people should, you know, wear their a masks, of course. but i also think that is very differently done. i have a friend who visited cape cod last weekend and went to see a very wealthy person, and we said let's take our masks, in l.a. they're playing golf with masks on. down here nobody's wearing a mask outside really. maria: yeah, it's interesting -- >> you know, it's kind of interesting to see how it's playing out. maria: and playing out differently depending on the state. i mean, you look at the fact that florida has many more nursing homes than new york, and yet more people died in nursing home in new york than in florida. so there are things to sort of identify in terms of what's specific to each state. go through some of the real estate that you own. you've got a great vantage point in terms of office space, commercial space.

how much is that, and tell me what you think of what that looks like when we get out of that. are you hearing from business owners, relaters that they -- renters that they want to change the way the building looks? are they retrofitting, etc. >> let's take the different asset classes, so in the office, again, it's kind of following the footprint of covid. and new york city is in a real different situation than most other places in the country. we don't actually own buildings in new york, but anecdotally, if you're in a b building, half the tenants aren't paying rent, a significant portion of tenants aren't paying rent and health clubs like equinox aren't paying rents. if you move out of manhattan, almost 97 of our tenants have paid -- 97% of our tenants have paid their represent. we own in minneapolis and portland and sacramento. so those towns people are paying their rents, and we own 80,000

apartments, and we don't own new york city, and we don't own california. those -- everyone's paying their rent, basically, now in apartments, about 97%. and, again, we're kind of in the red states, texas and atlanta, georgia. i think we're the largest owner of apartments in florida. people are paying their rents. the issue is in places like new york and california there's been this huge populist move to not pay rent, and it's almost unpatriotic to pay your rent, and there have been -- [laughter] slackers say don't pay your rent. we also have is control of a company called star property plus that trades on the new york stock exchange, a total enterprise value of about $15 billion. we're the nation's large commercial mortgage nonbank lender. and there we're working with borrowers to forbear on their interest experience and what -- expense, and what we also need is because we're empathetic to

the fact that they're not getting revenues, and i think in almost every case we've reached agreement with the owner of the property and we're the lender. but often times we borrow from banks also, so the whole chain has to work. the bank beneath us has to forbear interest, we'll forbear interest, and we'll give the guy four months, six months to get back on his feet. that really is mostly hotels where revenues went to zero -- maria: i see. >> not residential. there is one quirk of this recovery which is weird which is the forbearance on single family mortgages. as you may know, almost a trillion dollars of mortgages are in forbearance meaning the homeowner decided he wouldn't pay his interest expense for three months. that's government agency paper. of but how that plays out going forward, do those people in the fourth month catch up on the three months of interest they owe, or will they -- maria: yeah. >> -- pate over 12 months,

that's a chapter we haven't seen. martha: barry, i want to get your take on investing as well. you've got a great vantage point in terms of allocating capital. let's take a break, when we come back, gotta get your take on these markets. we'll be right back with more. introducing new voltaren arthritis pain gel, the first and only full prescription strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel available over-the-counter. new voltaren is powerful arthritis pain relief in a gel. voltaren. the joy of movement.

♪ ♪ maria: and we're back this weekend with starwood capital groom chairman barry sternlicht. interesting to see averages still near record highs even where we just came out of a full shutdown where businesses had zero cash flow and no revenue. go figure. what do you think about marketed today, barry e? >> well, i'm actually surprised at the pace. i thought we'd have a vaccine, so the whole investing cycle figuring out where to invest was how shallow, what would the recovery look like from here, today, to the vaccine's, you

know, wide distribution. and i think from what i'm seeing, we talked about it earlier, i mean, people are going out to restaurants in florida now, the hotels are reopening. they're going to have slow business at first, but we have a hotel in jacksonville on the water that ran 70% occupancy last weekend, and the panhandle of florida the hotels are running 70%, same in myrtle beach. people are home, they want to get away. it's also helping the shopping mall because they've never been home from monday through friday the entire day, everyone seems to be tired of going to the supermarket, so they're going to the mall. we have a mall actually in ohio which the number one macy's store in the country, who knew, in ohio. so people are -- there's pent-up demand for entertainment which i think physical shopping provides some form of entertainment. right here in miami there's a beautiful shopping center called bell harbor shops, and they have the guccis -- maria: it's beautiful. i've been there. >> it's beautiful, right? and it's packed.

you can only go in the stores -- maria: withdraw -- wow. >> there's little things on the floor that says stand here, stand here, and the restaurants were quite busy. they're spacing them out, but there's a lot of people out and about. i think that's very encouraging, exactly what we would have hoped would happen. i actually thought spending was going to slow going into this year because it's an election year, and covid sort of interrupted that. in some ways it may have helped the economy because it's accelerated a change to digital. people have learned, my mom learned paypal, she's 86. maria: wow. that's fabulous. >> actually it's amazing, right? and she got a thermometer online. sheshe was really fired up. maria: wow, i love your mom! 86, doing all this stuff. she's got to give my mom a call who's 87, trying to teach her -- [inaudible conversations]

maria: this ease back into things, is that a buy signal? do i want to buy this market here or wait for better valuations? >> so i think, you know, in a way the trump administration may get, your next guest is going to talk about it, i think, we're going to reinvent manufacturing now in the united states. we went from just in time inventory to now just in case inventory. and i think a lot of people, a lot of companies are going to move the supply chain back here. and with interest rates where they are and accommodations by local governments to help them grow their manufacturing, that's really important because with we need to retrain some of these workers that may not go back to restaurants, they may not go back to stores retailing, they may not go back to my hotels because for a while i think business travel's going to be impacted significantly. and until we fix airline travel so people feel comfortable getting on planes, both domestically and and internumberly, we're -- internationally, we're not going to get to full staffing, and there were 30 million americans

employed in those industries. maria: yeah. >> it's going to be a while, and some of these people are going to need to be retrained. but you can see where the opportunity is, and the federal government now should shift its focus to training these people from the store help and my hotels into how do they find jobs in this new economy that's going to form. and, again -- maria: i love that idea. >> we'd have an election issue, right? and before covid we had the election slowdown, two very diametrically opposed philosophies battling it out in public view. here we had a $6 trillion stimulus package. [laughter] so, you know, in some ways -- and then the consumer has the money, and i think most people, i think consumer confidence has not fallen as far as you may have expected. maria: blank check ceo, explain this company. you've been such an innovator. jaws acquisition going mix this week.

>> yeah, jaws acquisition is called a blank check company. essentially, we raised $690 million. we did it in a virtual zoom road show, and we had -- maria: unbelievable. >> more than two time the orders than we could take. we raised close to, the like i said, $700 million. our goal is to find a growth company to take public that may be stuck and can't go public. we'll probably target a transaction from 2 to 3 or 4 billion in total value and try to offer very cs and management -- vcs and management and authority some liquidity in a time when the markets are is still a little volatile. essentially, we're a vehicle for them to go public. negotiate with me and not wall street necessarily. maria: barry, it is great to see you. please don't be a stranger, come back soon. >> thanks, maria. great to be with you. good luck. maria: and to you. thank you. don't go anywhere,

♪ maria: and new developments with china, increased border tensions with fellow nuclear power india and unrest in hong kong highlighting the urgency behind the white house's effort to get u.s. companies to move their supply chains back to america. eric edwards' pharmaceutical company,phloe, is leading the effort, producing the ingredients for drugs in the united states. eric edwards, great to have you, thanks very much for joining us. >> great to be on the show. maria: eric, there are more than 60 bills right now in congress to try to hold china accountable whether it be for the supply chain situation, moving supply

chains, or making sure that there will be sanctions on individuals because of the overreach in hong kong and so many other issues around china right now. tell us how you're managing to actually produce in america. this is the largest contract we've ever seen with hhs, correct? >> well, it's one of the largest, for sure, that barta has provided. we're absolutely thrilled to be partnering with the united states government. we're thrilled that this administration has seen the need to reevaluate the supply chains and then take action working in unique public/private partnerships like this one with phloe, and we're trying to work to secure our nation's most essential medicines and their ingredients, and to do that, we have to evaluate how we make medicines here in america, how we distribute them and how we secure the ingredients that are vital in order to produce pills that are essential to the health

and well-being of all americans. we're doing that right now. we have the plans in place, and to execute that you have to reevaluate who your partners are in the supply chain from precursor chemical, starting material ingredient to the active ingredients to the finished dosage form. so that's part of the plan. maria: yeah. i mean, most people were pretty unnerved when they learned that 70% of the active ingredients in our prescription drugs are made in china. you're talking about antibiotics and penicillin and all of these things that are so important to americans in the middle of this pandemic. we had a threat from the chinese communist party where in state-run media they said, well, maybe we won't manufacture these prescription ingredients to america while donald trump pokes china about tariffs. we need to be less reliant on china. what specifically are the drugs that you planning on making here? >> what we wanted to start with

were those essential medicines vital for the health and well-being of americans during this covid-19 response. so we're talking about icu medications. in the news everyone's been talking about ventilator shortages and ppe shortages, but what about the medicines that actually are required to get individuals onto the ventilators, certain sed tyes, etc. we -- sedatives. we plan to manufacture blood pressure control, certain antibiotics as you mentioned. but we've lost this industry, maria, over 20 years, so it's going to take time. hopefully we'll be seeing the administration and h healthhs ce to informs in creative ways -- to invest in creative ways to bring other key manufacturing infrastructure back in addition to the phlow program. hopefully this is a catalyst, and we're happy and thrilled to be working with the government, but it's going to take a huge effort, and we're getting to work as fast as possible. maria: and i know that you are expert in this. you've been working on drug shortages for a long time in

your career. let me ask you, the first reason that so many u.s. manufacturers went to china in the first place, it was cheaper, you had cheap labor, you had lax manufacturing of conditions and lax environmental rule so they said, well, let's just do it there and sell it into america and all over the world. what about that, the cost? how are you able to do this and still do it efficiently in terms of the cost? isn't that the big issue? >> it is the big issue, and the way we're doing that is we're reinventing the supply chain and the manufacturing technology around how we make our medicines. we're using what's called advance continuous manufacturing. individuals and companies have not been investing in this for generic medicines. they started doing it for branded medicines, so the federal government is accelerating our efforts to use advance manufacturing approaches and techniques that increase the yields, reduce the environmental waste, improve the quality as you see there's been a ton of information on the news lately about the quality of some of the

pharmaceuticals that include ingredients made from other countries. and most importantly, it drives down the cost. so our processes have been validated before with our partners at medicine for all and bc who have shown they can reduce costs through this approach of up to 40%. in addition to that, you have to reinvent the supply chain and the distribution model which is broken in america, and we're going to be doing some very creative things in order to be competitive and to resecure this industrial base. you know, maria, it's crazy. individuals go into airports and we buy a $4 bottle of water, yet we get challenged in america when we're trying to make a $1.30 bottle of med zip. maria: such a great point. great to see you this weekend. erin edwards is the ceo of phlow manufacturing right here in the u.s. thank you, eric. don't go anywhere. more "wall street" right after this. ♪ ♪

maria: welcome back. that'll do it for us for this weekend. thank you so much for joining us. we'll have a big show next weekend, every friday at fox business, 9 p.m. eastern for another edition of "wall street," and next friday we'll be zeroing into the jobs situation when we get the may jobs numbers. join us for that. and this weekend over on fox news, "sunday morning futures," live at 10 a.m. eastern. we've got a big show this weekend, secretary of state mike pompeo, along with florida governor ron desantis, former white house chief strategist steve bannon and house minority leader kevin mccarthy. catch it live, 10 a.m. ian on fox news. and right here on fox business, start smart every weekday, tune

in 6-9 a.m. eastern for "mornings with maria." we've got a big show this monday, our five-year anniversary. join us then. that'll do it for us righthave e weekend, everybody, and i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ gerry: hello and welcome to the "wall street journal at large." when 2020 began, we all thought the big news story throughout the year would be the presidential election as president trump aimed to repeat his stunning 2016 win while democrats hoped to kick hem out of office. but the coronavirus, of course, has changed all that. not only is it still in the headlines, it's turned the race at least for the past few months into one of the most unusual in american history. because of the lockdown, the presumptive democratic nominee, former vice president joe biden, has been mostly stuck in h