Mark Cuban is raising the alarm again on President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff proposals.
In a Threads post on Friday, Cuban said companies are already bracing for potential tariffs on Chinese imports by shoring up inventory. Cuban wrote that this will inevitably raise consumer prices due to the cost of storing inventory.
While he didn’t specifically name Trump, Cuban referred to Trump’s proposal to put a 60% tariff on Chinese imports, which some economists say will have an inflationary impact on the economy.
“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, in anticipation of the tariffs creating accelerated demand for imports,” he wrote. “That money would have been used for expansion, raises, bonuses, and other operational elements. Because cash is relatively expensive, and it costs money to store inventory, those companies will increase prices as if they had paid the expected higher tariffs.”
Cuban, who became an unexpected surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign earlier this year, has repeatedly criticized Trump’s gratuitous use of tariffs in his economic policies.
“Trump has a new tax cut or tariff for every city he visits. Even when it violates his own signed policies or the law,” he wrote in an X post from September.
In an interview with Harris, Cuban called Trump “the Grinch that stole Christmas” because the 60% tariff will raise prices on goods like holiday gifts.
Cuban added in the Friday Threads post that the tariffs could also push the Chinese government to tell companies to stop buying from the United States altogether.
A Trump spokesperson dismissed Cuban’s statements. Cuban declined to comment.
Many economists say that Trump’s tariffs will ultimately hurt consumers’ wallets.
Economist Paul Krugman said the tariffs could see an “inflationary shock that is bigger than almost anything else you could do through federal policy.”
An analysis from the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics said the 60% tariff on Chinese imports could boost inflation by 0.4 percentage points in 2025. The current inflation rate is 2.4%, the lowest rate in three years. A 0.4-percentage point increase would undercut the Federal Reserve’s goal to bring inflation down to 2%.
An analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, said that the tariffs will provide a tax cut for the top 5% of US income earners.
Some company executives have been vocal about the impacts of the tariff proposals.
AutoZone CEO Philip Daniele said on a pre-election earnings call, “If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO Timothy Boyle told The Washington Post that the company is “set to raise prices” under new tariffs and that it will be “very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
BMW CEO Oliver Zipse offered a more optimistic view of the tariffs to reporters after the company’s Q3 earnings report on Wednesday, saying, “We shouldn’t be too nervous about what might happen.”
He said BMW has an “advantage” over other carmakers because of its large footprint in the United States.
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