Mark Cuban Says Donald Trump’s Policies More Socialist Than Bernie Sanders

Businessman Mark Cuban called former President Donald Trump’s price caps and price control policies on credit cards more socialist than Sen. Bernie Sanders has even proposed.
“That just says so much about how far Donald has gone to his socialist and communistic tendencies,” Cuban said about the Republican presidential nominee. “I know it sounds funny and kind of out of whack, but it’s true. These things that he takes off the top of his head, he just makes up in real time and then everyone around him tries to justify it.”
In a press call organized by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, Cuban said Harris and her policy team think through their policies.
“She doesn’t just off the top of her head say what she thinks the crowd wants to hear like the Republican nominee,” said Cuban, who has endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee. “They have a whole policy team.”
Cuban said he has asked Harris’ campaign questions, they go back to the correct team responsible for the topic, and return with a “serious, well-studied response.”
“That’s the antitheses of what Donald Trump is doing,” Cuban said. “He says things of the top of his head that tend to be ridiculous.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment via email on Tuesday regarding Cuban’s remarks.
Trump recently announced he wants to cap credit card interest rates “at around 10%” in order to not allow the companies to “make 25 to 30%” and allow “working Americans catch up.”
Sanders, an independent, and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have both previously branded themselves as Democratic Socialists, proposed a bill in 2019 to limit consumer debt to 15%.
The impact of the proposed rate cap by Trump could be massive for consumers as well as the financial industry. Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate, recently told CNBC that the average credit card interest rate is now surpassing 20%, and some cards even impose an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) as lofty as 36%.
“The market for credit cards would be entirely disrupted by a 10% cap,” Rossman said in an interview with CNBC.
On Monday, Trump also announced he would tariff John Deere by 200% if the company moves production to Mexico.
“As you know, they’ve announced a few days ago that they are going to move a lot of their manufacturing business to Mexico,” Trump said at an event on Monday in Pennsylvania. “I am just notifying John Deere right now that if you do that, we are putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.”
Cuban pointed out that if Trump puts 200% tariffs on the agricultural equipment company for moving, and a 10 or 20% “across the board tariff on Chinese imports” is also introduced, “the net result is that you made it cheaper for Chinese manufacturers to compete with John Deere.”
“You literally phased the destruction of one of the most historical companies in the United States of America,” Cuban said. “Just the concept, it just goes to show that he doesn’t think these things through.”
Cuban said the international tariff would be a problem for companies who have to incorporate the new costs into their pricing but also “the associated cost of hiring an import broker, dealing with all of the paperwork, record keeping and the rest so that the cost increases and the inflationary element aren’t just the tariffs themselves but also all of the administrative that goes along with it.”
Cuban, however, said Tuesday there are some instances where tariffs are acceptable. He specifically pointed to an instance where a company in China is subsidizing a product so that they can sell to the United States at a lower cost.
“It’d make perfect sense to incorporate tariffs. You’re seeing that with EVs. You’re seeing that with other products as well,” Cuban said. “There’s nothing wrong with strategic tariffs. I hope we use them judiciously.”
The businessman, however, has an issue with across-the-board tariffs.
“That’s just inflationary and that’s just a tax on the American people,” Cuban said. “That’s just a sales tax through and through.”
While Harris has not provided a full list of policies that “everybody wants,” Cuban said Trump is not able to explain any of his ideas by himself. He called the “well thought out process” of Harris’ campaign versus Trump’s spur of the moment ideas the “biggest difference between the two.”
“I want a President that thinks before he speaks or she speaks,” Cuban said. “I want a President that for business goes into details and has a policy team that understands all of the ramifications of what is being proposed. That really summarizes how I feel about the Republican nominee versus Vice President Harris.”
In addition, the Harris campaign received the endorsement from over 400 independent economists and economic policy experts, according to a press release from the campaign sent Tuesday morning.
Signers of the open letter include a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, former secretaries of the Department of Treasury, Commerce and Labor, former heads of the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisors and economists representing about 150 universities in 35 states.
“The choice in this election is clear: between failed trickle-down economic policies that benefit the few and economic policies that provide opportunity for all,” the endorsement letter reads. “It is a choice between inequity, economic injustice, and uncertainty with Donald Trump or prosperity, opportunity, and stability with Kamala Harris, a choice between the past and the future.”
Update: 9/24/2024, 12:08 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with more information.