Kevin O’Leary Says Trump’s Tariffs Are a ‘Long Game:’ Why He Says They’ll Help Investors
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Andrew Lisa
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Levi Leidy
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Best known for his role on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” Kevin O’Leary is an investor, entrepreneur and familiar face on big-name cable news and business shows — and he’s not shy about voicing his political opinions and thoughts on public policy.
He’s been particularly vocal about trade, in general, and in his support of President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, specifically — especially those levied on China, which he believes are necessary to protect American businesses and investors.
A Tradeoff of Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain
In a post on X, O’Leary stated that prices weren’t falling and eggs were still expensive, as were energy, housing, lumber and more. While cautious, he’s approaching the potential for tariff-based price hikes like an investor who’s willing to trade upfront cost for what he believes will be future dividends.
“This is all part of the long game to bring more investment back home,” he concluded in his post. “But in the short term? Volatility is here to stay. Stay sharp.”
O’Leary echoed Trump’s sentiment that the long-term benefits he envisions are worth the short-term economic anxiety that his plan could cause.
On May 4, Trump drew criticism for being flippant and out of touch with the strain that inflationary pressures put on household budgets when he told Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls, because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.”
The Cost of Leveling an Uneven Playing Field
In April, O’Leary appeared on CNN with a panel that mainly opposed Trump’s then-recent 104% tariff hike on China. O’Leary disapproved, too — but not like the other commentators.
“104% tariffs in China are not enough,” he said. “I’m advocating 400%.”
He continued that he does business in China, and that in his experience, the Chinese “don’t play by the rules,” which has long been Trump’s central thesis on his trade policy.
“They cheat, they steal,” he told the panel.
O’Leary said that China has spent decades in the World Trade Organization (WTO) openly violating the rules it agreed to upon joining to gain an unfair advantage over the U.S.
O’Leary said that tariffs are the only way to force China to abide by the rules that the rest of the WTO largely follows because the country doesn’t provide a legal avenue for redressing grievances.
“I can’t litigate in their courts,” he said.
Tariffs as a Moat Around America’s Intellectual Property
When O’Leary accused the Chinese of stealing, he wasn’t talking about the theft of tangible items.
“The steal IP,” he told the same CNN panel, in reference to intellectual property. “They take product technology. They steal it. They manufacture it and sell it back here.”
In a different CNN interview, O’Leary made a crude analogy to housebreaking a puppy in stating that China had to be “trained” through punitive tariffs because it was so comfortable with stealing America’s IP that it didn’t even know it was doing anything wrong.
“That’s where we are after 20 years,” he said. “They have not understood how this works.”
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