Billionaire Mark Cuban championed Vice President Kamala Harris‘s economic agenda hours before former President Donald Trump is set to give a speech in Savannah, Georgia, touting his tax and manufacturing plans Tuesday afternoon.
In a press call also joined by James Curbeam, the Teamsters’s national black caucus chairman, Cuban criticized Trump over his threats to impose 200% tariffs on the company John Deere for moving parts of its manufacturing to Mexico.
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“He says things off the top of his head that tend to often be ridiculous, if not insane,” Cuban, who endorsed Harris earlier this month, said of Trump before moving on to the John Deere controversy.
“First of all, I’m not the expert in this space, but didn’t he propose and sign the USMCA that defines the rules for which companies like John Deere can work and put manufacturing in Mexico?” he added, referring to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated as president.
“If you put 200% tariffs on John Deere for moving, a decision that they feel is right for their business, and you put a 10% or 20% crazy across-the-board tariff on Chinese imports, the net result is that you’ve made it cheaper for Chinese manufacturers to compete with John Deere,” Cuban continued. “You literally face the destruction of one of the most historied companies in the United States of America.”
Trump first threatened the company for moving its manufacturing during an event in rural Pennsylvania on Monday, telling the audience, “If they want to build in the United States, there’s no tariff.”
Harris has made Trump’s tariff plans central to her economic arguments against him. The Biden administration has kept those Trump imposed essentially in place after he left office, but Harris has warned they are a tax on everyday goods.
Trump will deliver remarks on his plans for “new American industrialism” in Georgia on Tuesday. One day later, Harris is expected to lay out new plans on the economy in Pennsylvania, the most crucial battleground state this election cycle.
Her campaign spent much of Tuesday morning attempting to counter Trump’s perceived edge on the economy, announcing the endorsement of more than 400 economists and policy experts.
The Harris campaign also announced that the Teamsters Joint Council 75, representing members in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, endorsed the vice president after the national Teamsters union declined to support either presidential candidate.
Curbeam, the Teamsters’s national black caucus chairman, said Trump’s “record and agenda prove that he will sell out the working Workers of America.”
“He has no love for the union workers or members. He has no love for the working people of America. He only cares about himself,” he continued. “That’s why the Teamsters National Black Caucus, Joint Council 75, that includes Georgia, we endorsed Kamala Harris.”
Trump, for his part, has made repeated overtures to the labor movement, such as allowing Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention over the summer and addressing the striking United Auto Workers union last year in September.
Trump has announced several economic proposals geared at the working class, such as ending taxes on tips, which Harris subsequently called for, and ending taxes on overtime pay.
“Mark Cuban has no idea what he is talking about — if he actually looked at Kamala Harris’s failed record as vice president and listened to what she says, he would know her policies will destroy our country and the American dream for hardworking families,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in response to Cuban’s attacks.
Harris has made similar overtures to the working class as Trump by attempting to brand him as a crony for billionaires, as well as with policy proposals, including her plan to expand the child tax credit.
Republicans have criticized Harris for proposing a cap on the price of some goods as she attempts to distance herself from the 40-year-high inflation experienced under President Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Cuban cited Trump’s new proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% to counter that line of attack.
“You’ve got Donald Trump getting involved in price caps and price control to a greater extent than self-described socialist Bernie Sanders,” Cuban said. “And I think that just says so much about how far, how far Donald has gone to, you know, his socialist and communistic tendencies, right?”
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When he was asked about the Biden-Harris administration maintaining some Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods, Cuban said, “There’s nothing wrong with strategic tariffs.”
“Not 100% of everything that the Trump administration did was wrong, right? Maybe it’s 95% but not 100%,” Cuban said. “Where there’s a situation like a strategic tariff that’s already been put in place, you know, it’s great to continue.”
