Mark Cuban speaks at a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse on Thursday, October 17, 2024 in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Abby Parr AP
Mark Cuban mocked Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff proposals Thursday, suggesting the Republican presidential candidate doesn’t understand his tax philosophy.
“I learned a lot about business, like how tariffs work,” the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” host told supporters of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Ta.
Cuban said President Trump “thinks that China is paying for the bill,” which would raise taxes on all Chinese imports to up to 60% or more.
“This is the guy who thought Mexico would pay for the wall,” Cuban quipped, to laughter and cheers from the crowd.
President Trump has repeatedly pointed to tariffs as a panacea, arguing that heavy import taxes, including flat tariffs as high as 20%, would bring in huge amounts of revenue from overseas, helping to finance numerous tax cuts and economic stimulus packages. I am doing it. All U.S. industries are free from inflation.
But U.S. importers pay these tariffs directly to the government, and mainstream economists argue that President Trump’s plan will increase the burden on Americans. For example, the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that a universal 20% tariff and a 60% tariff on China would cost the average American household more than 20%. $2,600 per year.
Cuban added that he believes President Trump “understood how tariffs worked” in the 1990s and 2000s.
“But we don’t know what happened to him,” Cuban said.
The visit to Wisconsin was the first of three battleground states Cuba is visiting to support the vice president’s bid for the White House.
The Harris campaign said Mr. Cuban will travel to Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday to host a speech on Ms. Harris’ economic policies. On Sunday, he will campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan with Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff.
Mr. Trump is also gaining more on-the-ground support from prominent billionaires. tesla And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Elon Musk speaks as part of a campaign town hall in support of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on Thursday, October 17, 2024 in Folsom, Pennsylvania.
Matt Rourke | AP
Musk was scheduled to embark on a multi-day speaking tour across Pennsylvania on Thursday with America PAC, the super political action committee he has used to funnel tens of millions of dollars in support of Trump.
He was scheduled to host a town hall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Thursday afternoon to promote absentee and early voting in the commonwealth, NBC News reported.
Musk announced plans to suspend voting soon after. Filings to the Federal Election Commission He revealed that he donated nearly $75 million to America PAC from July to early September alone.
Musk recently joined Trump on stage at a campaign event near Butler, Pennsylvania. It’s the same location as the July 13 rally where a suspected assassin nearly killed Trump and shot and killed another attendee.
Cuban’s rise in key battleground states, first reported by Yahoo Finance, follows his frequent praise of Harris in interviews with CNBC and other media outlets.
Mr. Cuban has long been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump. At a Harris campaign press conference last month, Cuban denounced Trump’s pledge to impose blanket tariffs and even higher import taxes on China as “insane.”
”And when you say you’re going to put 10%, 20%, or 60% tariffs on China and other companies and countries, that’s just inflation, that’s just a tax on the American people. It’s a sales tax through and through,” Cuban said in a Sept. 24 phone call.
