The Ben Mulroney Show - Kevin O'Leary tells Ben we are at war with China

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Guests and Topics on Today's Show Guest: Kevin O’Leary, Chairman of O’Leary Ventures, Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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How did we get to this point? Who is responsible and how do we make our way through? Somebody who has been at the forefront of this debate since day one has been investor shark, former dragon, Kevin O'Leary, and it is our, our pleasure to welcome the chairman of O'Leary ventures and Mr. Wonderful himself back to the Ben Mulroney show. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. So tell me how did we get here?

Who's to blame? This communication, I think you have to read the room. Let's take Trump's position and his number three or number two mandate, depending on which week it was when he was campaigning, was to secure the border and get rid of fentanyl made in China. So you know that with certainty. Canadians know that. Americans know that. That's the promise he made. And he's going to deliver on it. And so that, Americans know that, that's the promise he made, and he's going to deliver on it. And so, what we should be concerned about is reading the room. And I'll make a point about this here.

Remember, Daniel Smith went down to Mar-a-Lago, read the room, she figured it out, and what did she do this week? She basically topped up the $1.3 billion Canadian dollar commitment the feds made with an additional $29 million right out of Alberta. So she's topping up border security of her border. The other premiers need to do that today. Yeah. They have to do the same thing,

specifically about fentanyl because that's what Trump has to deliver on. He has to win on that and then we win. We don't need this tariff. We don't need a war with the United States. It's a bad idea and economic war is crazy. We all know that. Now remember, we have some bullets too, if you want to talk about economic bullets. Seventeen states in the U.S., their number one trading partner, it's Canada. Remove oil out of the equation, the $280 billion

of oil that Daniel Smith ships to the United States at a discounted price, and we're in a trade deficit with the US. We buy more stuff from them than they buy from us. So all of this concern about trade deficits is not really what you got to read. You got to read the room. It's fentanyl. We don't want fentanyl. We don't want drug cartels.

We don't want our people dying with fentanyl. So it's a win-win to clean this up. So I expect the Ford will go on television today and the other premieres and top up because it's small change, $29 million in the context of a trade war and get this thing kicked down the road. Yeah. So as somebody, Kevin, as somebody who's, as somebody who's spent time with Donald Trump, you know, his temperament, you know, his behavior, you've seen him behind closed doors and then you've seen him in the camp in front of the camera. So you know that what he says in one space

isn't necessarily what he what he telegraphs and communicates in the other space. Is there a chance? Are you saying that if it's all hands on deck, and doing whatever it takes to telegraph to him, that we are taking this seriously at all levels of government? Do you think that there could be a reprieve on these tariffs yet to come? Yes, it's not just to him. I don't know if you noticed the American airwaves yesterday, Daniel Smith was all over Fox television. It's the it's the Trump base, watching Fox News and Fox Business. Yeah, Trump watches it too. And so he wants to see messages like that getting to his base so that it looks like

he's delivering on the promise of ridding the country of fentanyl. That's the whole idea. You got to read the room. You got to understand how this guy works. That's how he works. He has to get a win. He got the win out of the Colombian guys when he sent back their criminals. He whacked them with 25%.

That was the message. They immediately rescinded and three planes landed. Nobody lost any money on that. And who wants criminals anyways? So the whole point is we've got to figure that out in the next 20 hours. So I expect the other premiers will do the same thing that Daniel Smith did and get out there and communicate that they don't want fentanyl in their provinces either. They don't want the Chinese using a forest border in their provinces. This is the focus right now. And if we get this done, the only objective is to kick this whole issue down the road

until we have a federal election and we put a mandate in place with ever the new leader is going to be to negotiate with Trump on NAFTA three. Cause there's a big economic opportunity here, not a downside. That's who should be focusing on. So let's get that message out. Let's get it out on Fox. Let's get every premier saying, I'll top up with an extra whatever it is, like Smith did. 29 million bucks Canadian is nothing in the context of what it costs to get involved in

in a trade war. Kevin, let's talk about the world of AI. I think anybody who has been following AI over the past just a couple of weeks, and must have gotten their their heads must be spinning like tops. On one day, we are celebrating massive investments by the leaders of AI in the United States. Donald Trump is talking about how there's hundreds of billions of dollars will be invested. And then the Chinese come in with what looks like a better version, a better mouse trap that they've built with far less capital, and that ended up wiping out so much of the value of so many stocks in the United States. What do you make of that? What's the state of play?

All BS. It's all been proven in the last 48 hours. Looks like this is what happened. Out of Singapore, where it's fifteen percent in the dvd sales it looks like somewhere between five and six thousand boards with the chips on them went to china and the chinese come up story that they only spent that's one point six billion dollars with the hardware right there if you put it inside a data center idea that they made it for six million dollars is complete bs of course it will the markets in a trillion dollars with the tech valuation was wiped off the map, which is brutal. I mean that's the Chinese messing around.

And then we find out that the code has been ripped off as well. Also if you query on this thing, anything about China comes out with just glowing reviews of everything the supreme leader does. So it's a piece of spyware and propaganda. And you know, you gotta think that there's a 50-50 chance that TikTok goes dark in the next 58 days. So they gotta find lifeboats to keep pumping out Chinese propaganda to the Americans and everywhere else. So if you download this thing and you read the agreement, it scrapes your emails.

You don't wanna do that. That's a really bad idea. So this is just more Chinese technology. So we're in an AI war with China now too. Look, these guys are not playing by the rules. Everybody knows that. And this AI BS story is just another part of that. We keep letting them in the door.

I mean, you would think with TikTok and the security concerns that people have with it, we would have been very weary of another Trojan horse. And yet here we are almost with open arms, so many people downloading DeepSeek like it's going out of style. Yeah, except the actual order, the TikTok order out of Congress

in the nine to zero Supreme Court decision four weeks ago, doesn't just specify TikTok. It says any foreign adversary using technology to scrape American data in foreign soil that adversary gets shut down. Hey, Kevin, I don't want to miss out on asking you this final question because crypto seems to be the, everybody's buzzword these days in the Trump administration.

Are you too bullish on crypto in the Trump era? I'm very bullish on it. I'm also bullish for it in Canada, as you know, and I've disclosed this many times. I'm a major shareholder of Wonderfile, the number one exchange in Canada for one reason. Now that Trump is putting in regulatory guardrails, we're going to do the same thing in Canada for the OSC.

Canadian banks are under tremendous pressure by their own constituents to be able to own Bitcoin. The way they're going to do that is keep it on the bank balance sheets and use it in exchange for price transparency and liquidity. And who's that going to be? This is a speculation on my part, but I've certainly put my money where my mouth is, WunderFi. That's where it's going to happen. And do you think that that's going to do something about the volatility of a lot of these cryptocurrencies?

I think there'll still be volatility, but the grand daddy of them all is Bitcoin. That's the one Bob and wealth wants to go. That's grand daddy of them all is Bitcoin. That's the one Bobbin Wealth wants to go. That's where Canadians want to put their money. That's the one that's performed. It doesn't replace gold. I own them both. But the point is you can't have Bitcoin unless it's safely secured in a compliant wallet with transparency and liquidity.

And that's, we have 1.7 million accounts in Canada now, nearly 2 billion, primarily Bitcoin under management Wonderfly has done a great job in consolidating the market for Canadians and finally something that's compliant with the OSC order. Kevin I really appreciate you coming on like I said there are very few people who've had access to Donald Trump the way you have and your insights are invaluable so thank you so much and I hope that in the days ahead we'll be able to lean on you for some more advice. Let's see what happens in the next 24 hours.

All right. That was Kevin O'Leary, chairman of O'Leary Ventures and Shark Tank's Mr. Wonderful himself. Are you kidding me? Every Thursday, watch heartwarming programs like an all-new Extreme Makeover Home Edition at 8. Home at Five! We are so lucky to be a part of this. And Honest Renovation, starring Jessica Alba and Lizzie Mathis at 9. Changing these homes, we can change families. There's no place like it. Home Network. Stream on STAP TV.