Trumpland went wild Wednesday after former Shark Tank star and MAGA’s Canadian darling Kevin O’Leary said the U.S. should impose a 400 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
O’Leary, 70, told a CNN panel that someone should challenge China and that President Donald Trump should tax them into oblivion—despite a negative market reaction to tariffs this month that has incinerated trillions of market capital for U.S. companies.
Such a drastic measure is needed to have Chinese President Xi Jinping on a plane to Washington to cut a deal as soon as possible, O’Leary said. He claimed the current 104 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports will not be enough to move the needle.
“They take product technology, they steal it, they manufacture it, [and] sell it back here,” O’Leary said of China. “I want Xi on an airplane to Washington to level the playing field. This is not about tariffs anymore. Nobody has taken on China yet. Not the Europeans, no administration for decades. As someone who actually does business there, I’ve had enough.”
He added, “America is the No. 1 economy on earth with all the cards. We will not have that forever. It’s time to squeeze Chinese heads into the wall.”
O’Leary’s idea to quadruple the current tariff rate was quickly celebrated by some of the Republican president’s advisers, acolytes, and supporters.
Donald Trump Jr. reshared the clip on X with three “100 percent” emojis, giving the plan his endorsement. The Libs of TikTok page praised O’Leary for slamming China’s “cheating and stealing.” Countless others, including conservative media co-owner Collin Rugg, shared the clip to their millions of followers.
This is the hardest shit I’ve heard in the 10 years of MAGA pic.twitter.com/ZASGs7dCmp
— Andrew McCarthy (@AMcCarthyNY) April 9, 2025
“This is the hardest s–t I’ve heard in the 10 years of MAGA,” posted the “America First” intelligence analyst Andrew McCarthy to his 40,000 X followers.
The right-wing Rasmussen Reports’ page wrote of the clip: “Chinese Trade Truth Bombs Away!”
O’Leary is not an official Trump adviser, but claims to have the president’s ear. The businessman lives in Miami Beach and has become a Mar-a-Lago regular. He even visited the president’s South Florida estate in January to discuss U.S.-Canada relations with him.
MAGA has embraced O’Leary while his countrymen have overwhelmingly rejected his right-wing politics. He ran for the leadership of the Canadian Conservative Party in 2017 and won just one percent of the vote, and these days he often finds himself on the receiving end of online insults from those still living north of the border.
Ribbing of that nature continued Wednesday as his Chinese tariff clip went viral.
“We all owe Kevin O’Leary an apology,” wrote one Canadian commentator sarcastically. “All this time we thought he was a traitor to Canada, trying to sell us down the river, but no. He was putting on a facade to weave his way into MAGA’s inner circles to destroy America from within.”
The post MAGA Goes Wild for Its Most Bonkers Tariff Plan Yet appeared first on The Daily Beast.
