Billionaire Mark Cuban has warned that Donald Trump's promise to slap tariffs of 60 percent or more on Chinese goods is already having a negative impact on American companies.
"Right now every company that imports from China is taking all the cash they can muster, and buying up as much as they can and stuffing it in a warehouse" before the tariffs are imposed, Cuban, who supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the election, wrote on the social messaging platform Threads.
The money being diverted "would have been used for expansion, raises, bonuses and other operational elements," the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and "Shark Tank" host said.
"There is no benefit from across-the-board tariffs. They increase costs for everyone. And, they result in retaliatory tariffs so that American companies that export get hurt as well," Cuban noted.
Trump, who described "tariff" as a "very beautiful word," said the levies would help pay down the national debt and reduce taxes. What many Americans don't understand is that China doesn't pay the tariffs; American importers like Target and Costco do, and pass the costs onto to their consumers.
Economists have also linked tariffs to increased inflation as the additional cost of the tax makes imports more expensive for consumers or businesses buying the product.
U.S. businesses are also concerned about disruptions that could result from a general tariff. Seventy-five percent of executives said a 10 percent general goods tariff would "significantly hinder their company's growth," according to a recent survey by accounting firm PwC.
Trump has said he would reimpose the tariffs on goods from China and other countries that he began in his first administration when he slapped them on roughly $380 billion worth of foreign imports.
The Tax Foundation said a return to tariffs would be an "abomination" and would be devastating to American businesses and consumers.
"It would harm U.S. farmers, manufacturers, and consumers (especially those with low incomes); upend supply chains and impose significant costs as businesses deal with resulting fragmentation; and create a world in which the United States is increasingly left behind on the global stage," the nonprofit organization wrote in a report about Trump campaign's policies in January.
