OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Leftist billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who has frequently criticized Donald Trump, took another verbal potshot at the former president during a Wednesday interview on Fox News.
Specifically, Cuban told host Neil Cavuto that Trump’s plan to implement widespread tariffs on many imports — which the GOP nominee used during his first administration to offset the massive U.S. trade imbalance — was “insane” and “inflationary.”
“First of all, strategic tariffs aren’t bad. So if a country is trying to dump in the United States and we have a manufacturer there, tariff them. That’s great,” Cuban said. “But across-the-board tariffs [of] 10 or 20% is just inflationary. It’s a tax on the American consumer.
“But to make matters even worse, what’s truly insane, when you threaten a legendary company like John Deere with a 200% tariff if they move, but only a 10 or 20% tariff on China, what you’re doing is you’re making it easy for the Chinese competitors to take business away from John Deere. That is the definition of insane,” he added.
Trump vowed to heavily sanction John Deere if the company moved forward with a proposal to move its manufacturing to Mexico.
Cavuto responded: “A lot of your business colleagues say the definition of insane is supporting Kamala Harris. Yet you do. You’re a smart, savvy businessman. You came from nothing to be a multibillionaire, so you’re pretty good at what you do. What do you see in her that you don’t see in Donald Trump?”
“I think she’s thorough. If you look at Donald, when he talks about his policies, they’re very impetuous. They’re impulsive. They’re, you know, set to match whatever is happening at a rally,” Cuban responded. “Whereas with the Harris campaign and Kamala herself, she’s very thorough. She’s very precise. Her team really vets every idea.
“And to me, that’s important as a businessperson because you can trust what she says. Think about what happens when Donald comes out and says, I’m going to put a 10% cap on credit card interest rates. The next thing that happens isn’t that he explains why. It’s that everybody around him explains what he says,” Cuban continued.
“He can’t explain it for himself. Everybody’s got to explain for him. Or whether it’s a 10 or 20 or 60% tariff or the 200% on John Deere. With Kamala Harris, no one has to explain for her. She takes the time to vet her policies thoroughly, and once she says them and presents them, they are what they are. They’re self-explanatory,” he added.
Cavuto’s claim that many business experts do not support Harris’ economic policies is correct. She has said she wants to raise the corporate tax rate from its current level of 21 percent—which was decreased from a high of 38 percent thanks to a law passed by Republicans and signed by Trump in 2017—while also raising the top tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, who are responsible for most job creation.
Two of the most liberal news organizations in the United States have hit Harris over her economic policy, in fact.
An opinion piece on CNN argued that the vice president’s economic plan could create more issues than it solves.
“Food prices have surged by more than 20% under the Biden-Harris administration, leaving many voters eager to stretch their dollars further at the grocery store. On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she has a solution: a federal ban on price gouging across the food industry, CNN economics reporter Elisabeth Buchwald said. “There’s just one issue: Harris’ proposal could create more problems than the one it’s trying to solve, some economists say.”
“This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Obama administration economist Jason Furman told The New York Times last month. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”
The Washington Post Editorial Board was not any kinder.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech Friday was an opportunity to get specific with voters about how a Harris presidency would manage an economy that many feel is not working well for them,” the board said on Friday. “Unfortunately, instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.”
