Kevin O’Leary: ‘I Want Heavy, Heavy, Heavy Tariffs on China’

GOWDY: “Listen to President Trump contrast his agenda with Harris’s agenda, and I’ll ask you about it on the other side.”

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Trump: “When I was running things, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. (...) She would be a disaster. But just so you understand, if you followed her policy, you will end up in 1929-style depression, 100% certain. And companies will flee and jobs will flee and everything will flee. We will have no country left. And she’s the only person I’ve ever seen that is campaigning on a massive tax hike. I’ve never seen that before.”
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GOWDY: “All right, so the media tells us that so-called experts — I don’t know what an expert is, I guess anybody that’s 100 miles away from their hometown is an expert, but the Democrats love to say the experts are critical of Trump’s plans and they’re laudatory about Harris’s. I consider you to be an expert. So what are we getting if Harris wins, beyond what you’ve already told us? And let me also ask about tariffs, because that is something new for the Republican Party. They used to be free traders, but now they’re talking about tariffs.”
O’LEARY: “There are no experts. The only expert is the market. That is the expert. It decides, it puts the capital to work in every sector every day on a risk-adjusted basis. The idea that any party, any politician, any leader has an expert that can foresee the future, that is complete — you know what I’m going to say, complete — that is not how America works. The market is the market and that’s which driven the economy for a long time successfully. Tariffs I’m not in love with, with the exception of China. I believe, dealing with China, they do not play at a level playing field. I’ll give you an example, something very simple so everybody knows. TikTok, Congress on a bipartisan basis said, ‘Look, it’s a spyware and we want to shut it down January 19th.’ It’s an act of Congress, it’s the demand of the people of America, they made that decision. The Chinese came here, the supreme leader who controls it, and he used our court system to sue us, to litigate that from happening, suing the American people. Do you think I can do that in China? Not a chance in hell I could do that in China. So I’m okay if you want to use our legal system against us, but I have to do the same thing. I want access to their courts, I want access to their IP, they have to pay the same price to list their companies that I do, and they don’t because they don’t have the same compliance costs, and we should kick them off the exchanges. I want to go to DEFCON 19 against China. I don’t like tariffs against anybody else, but I want to bring them to their knees with a blowtorch to deal with us fairly. That is why you use tariffs. You squeeze them because the Chinese only understand the stick. I’ve said it countless times, they understand the stick, they respect the stick, give them the stick. And believe me, after enough pain, because their economy has got some fractures in it, they will say, ‘Okay, just kidding. We will play on a level playing field.’ I want heavy, heavy, heavy tariffs on China, more than we have, even more, because I live with. They steal our IP. I can’t say enough negative stuff. I’m sorry, I’m just telling the truth.”
GOWDY: “That’s exactly why I have you on, it’s because this old washed up country prosecutor is not an economist. I need the truth, and so do our viewers, and we’re going to get it from you with the clean language we want on a Sunday night. So thank you for all of that and thank you for joining us. We’ll see you real soon.”
O’LEARY: “Take care.”