“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that retailers should absorb the costs of tariffs rather than passing them onto consumers, highlighting growing tensions between the administration and major retailers over trade policy implementation.
What Happened: O’Leary directly challenged Trump’s demand that retailers like Walmart should bear the financial burden of tariffs. “This idea that the president says, ‘Listen, retailers, eat the tariffs.’ That’s not going to happen,” O’Leary said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill.”
The investor predicted that the cost increases would be shared between consumers and retailers, though he noted the uncertainty around specific tariff rates pending future negotiations. “There’s going to be some distribution of the pain between increased prices, and retailers will take some of the hit, …