Investor and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary blasted the Supreme Court's ruling Friday that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in issuing broad emergency tariffs.
O'Leary called the 6-3 decision a "nightmare" and said the high court "created a mess" by ruling that the IEEPA does not authorize a president to impose broad-based tariffs, marking a major rebuke of Trump's use of emergency powers to reshape U.S. trade policy.
"There's nothing wrong with reciprocal tariffs," O'Leary told CNN's "The Arena with Kasie Hunt." "If a country adds a 10% [value added tax] – and we don't call it a VAT tax in the U.S., we'll just do a 10% tariff.
"There's nothing wrong with that. That's the stable tariff negotiation that's gone on forever.
"But you've got situations where punitive tariffs were used during this period the Supreme Court looked at and ruled on this morning and said, no you can't do that, that's a tax. And Congress wasn't consulted."
O'Leary said American companies might now have to pursue refunds on roughly $150 billion in tariffs already paid to the federal government in order to comply with the ruling. Some economists have suggested the total exposure could exceed $175 billion. O'Leary said, "no one ever thinks about the small business guy."
"Where does he sit in this now?" he said. "He has to somehow go get this back from Treasury, the $150 billion, and distribute it to the people that paid it or he won't be compliant.
"I wish the Supreme Court had called me, I know this sounds ridiculous, before they ruled on this because I would have said to them, Wait a second, wait a second. This isn't going to help the people that employ half the people in America.
"This is not going to be easy. This is an additional cost on us. This is a major compliance cost."
O'Leary said he's going to ask for guidance when he's at the State of the Union on Tuesday "because my head is getting squeezed from the top and the bottom to be compliant and every business in America is going through this right now."
"There are people that want their money back within the distribution shareholder and lender system," he said. "And for me, and I'll tell you right now, you're the first to hear it.
"I'm setting up a resource called wondertrust.com hiring, if not hundreds, thousands of accountants and lawyers because I don't know how else to be compliant and I'm going to use them with my companies.
"Or just what else are we supposed to do? Because everybody wants their money back. And I wish, I don't know what the policy is going to be on that. It's not a great afternoon for me, to be honest with you."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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