in World News ‘Shark Tank’ Star Kevin O’Leary Schools Anti-Trump Reporter on Tariffs in Contentious Interview
In a contentious interview with Yahoo Finance last week, “Shark Tank” co-host and Canadian mogul Kevin O’Leary defended President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, arguing that they represented “a behemoth negotiation” between the United States and the world.
The appearance came after days of stock-market losses — and, as Yahoo Finance host Madison Mills, who clearly wasn’t a fan of Trump’s policies, noted, “[E]very source on our show this morning [said] that these tariffs will be causing a recession in the United States.”
O’Leary said that this wasn’t certain and that it depended on “how long the tap’s going to be on.”
“We’ve never done this before,” O’Leary said. “We’ve never taken on the entire globe.”
O’Leary noted that there’s “two aspects” to the tariffs: reciprocality and specificity.
Reciprocality, as he noted, would likely “go away pretty quickly” once everyone sat down at the negotiating table.
“The more complex aspect of these negotiations are around the idea of trade imbalances,” he said. “And so, when you put on tariffs to try to fix trade imbalances, it’s difficult, because the largest economy on earth is the United States. So you’re really starting a behemoth negotiation.”
Host Mills interrupted and noted that China had hit the United States with a 34 percent retaliatory tariff, arguing, “We are not getting closer to free trade. We are just getting further into a trade war.”
“No, China’s a whole different story,” O’Leary noted. “This is about leveling the playing field on a wide range of issues, including [intellectual property] law, access to business, access to courts, being compliant with U.S. regulations on securities. There is a laundry list of grievances with China that have been around since they joined the [World Trade Organization].”
If those were the issues, Mills pressed, why do use tariffs as the tool?
O’Leary responded perfectly: “What tool do you suggest they do when nothing else is working? … China’s different than all the other countries. China has to be dealt with.”