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Investor and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary believes most business leaders aren’t sweating current trade tensions as much as it may seem. In a recent post on X, he said, “Behind closed doors, CEOs know the game. Tariffs and trade pain are temporary, reciprocity is coming.”
O’Leary explained that many companies expect current tariff pressures to ease within the next two years. “That’s why many are quietly eating the costs, trimming waste and using AI to boost productivity,” he said. In other words, rather than passing on the full burden to customers, businesses are trying to ride it out strategically.
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The post also contained an interview, in which O’Leary offered more context. When asked what CEOs really think about the current administration’s trade policies, he said, “They’re going to end up reciprocal. It’s going to be brutal watching this passion play play out, but country by country, it’s going to end up reciprocal. Most CEOs have come to that conclusion.”
With that expectation in mind, many companies are choosing to absorb the costs for now. “They’re eating the tariffs. They’re not passing on the costs yet,” O’Leary said. Instead, they’re telling staff to cut unnecessary spending and find efficiency boosts through AI tools.
Asked whether companies are happy to eat the tariff costs, O’Leary said, “Nobody’s happy to eat costs, but what they’re doing is they’re saying to their staff, let’s cut on things we don’t need, let’s use AI to enhance our productivity.”
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He added that many companies are trying to strike a balance by passing only a small portion of the added costs onto consumers while they wait to see how trade negotiations unfold. According to O’Leary, it’s not just President Donald Trump but the entire administration signaling that reciprocal trade is the goal.
