Washington: “Trade should not be used as a weapon,” said prominent billionaire investor Warren Buffett during a speech on Saturday.
At the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, he warned that trade could potentially escalate into an act of war. While he refrained from directly naming Trump, his implications were quite clear. Analysts have increasingly voiced concerns that tariffs could significantly hamper global economic growth.
A couple of months back, Buffett expressed to CBS that tariffs are essentially “taxes on goods,” countering Trump’s portrayal of them as merely a straightforward revenue increase.
At 94, Buffett still leads his business group and advocates for maintaining trade relationships worldwide, stating, “We should do our best, and they should do their best. That’s what we originally did.”
He emphasized that prosperity isn’t a zero-sum game; success in one nation doesn’t solely come at the expense of another. Instead, both can prosper together.
Buffett remarked, “The more prosperous the rest of the world is, the less burden it will be on us. I believe it will thrive and be safer than we assume.”
He warned that it’s perilous for a nation to provoke resentment from others while asserting its superiority.
“In my opinion, when there are 7 billion people you don’t particularly like, that’s a significant error,” Buffett said. “And you’ve got 300 million people claiming how successful they are.”
Regarding recent shifts in financial markets, he noted that they are “really nothing” in the grand scheme of things.
Berkshire Hathaway announced a 14% drop in first-quarter profits, bringing them down to $9.6 billion, translating to a considerable decline of $4.47 per share.
Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a modest textile firm when he acquired it in the 1960s into a colossal conglomerate valued at over $1 trillion in liquid assets and worth $300 billion.
His remarkable achievements, along with his knack for articulating complex ideas in simple terms, have made him a significant figure in the business and financial sectors, earning him the moniker “Omaha Oracle.”
