Kevin O’Leary Explains Trump’s Tariff Threats to World Economic Leaders ‘Will Get in Line’
“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary broke down what calls President Donald Trump’s “tariff signal” to various countries in an effort to boost American manufacturing.
“The tariff signal, if you want to call it, is a bargaining tool for leverage because Trump commands the biggest market on earth,” O’Leary told “The Story.”
Trump confronts Bank of America CEO for not taking ‘conservative job’
Trump On Thursday, he addressed the World Economic Forum (WEF), threatening companies that don’t make their products in America with tariffs. Afterwards, he took questions from five world leaders in investment and energy and criticized Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan for not doing business with conservative companies.
O’Leary responded to the move as “just the way [Trump] is.”
“We’ve been listening to Trump for 12 years,” O’Leary said. “If you don’t understand that at this point, he’s not going to change. He’s going to pick somebody out of the crowd, out of the sector, and he’s going to say something like that. He’s trying to send a signal, and yet there’s a lot of noise in it.
O’Leary said Trump’s message is “different for different countries,” like Mexico and Canada, before explaining Trump’s main message.
“These messages are different for different countries. For example, Mexico, we’re going to build a wall, but we also want you to make sure you stop sending illegal immigrants from your countries and from other countries, or you’ll be tariffed.”
O’Leary added: “To the Canadians, start spending on northern border security and pay two percent to NATO and stop sending fentanyl from China across the border into the United States or face tariffs.”
During Trump’s address to the WEF, he said, “My message to every business in the world is very simple: come make your product in America, and we’ll give you some of the lowest taxes of any nation on earth. But if you don’t” don’t your product in America, which is your prerogative, then you will simply have to pay a tariff. “
“It starts with a message that’s loud and clear,” O’Leary said. “Get in line, do what you said you were going to do or face a vicious barrier to getting into the biggest market in the world. And it’s going to affect your economy. I heard it loud and clear.”
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During Trump’s second presidential campaign, he repeatedly threatened to tariff imports from China and the European Union, call Tariffs “The Greatest Thing Ever Invented.”
“I told the European Union that they have to make up their huge deficit with the United States by buying a lot of our oil and gas,” Trump wrote In truth, a social post on December 20. “Otherwise, it’s tariffs all the way !!!”
