The first question for Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting involved world trade as President Trump’s tariff policy disrupts the status quo.
“Trade should not be a weapon,” Buffett said at the end of a detailed answer about the history of the United States and how global trade developed.
“We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world,” the 94-year-old investor said, “and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best. … I do not think it’s a great idea to try and design a world where a few countries say ‘ha ha ha we’ve won,’ and other countries are envious.”
Buffett later added that “the United States, we’ve won. We’ve become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago. There’s nothing that’s anything like it. And it’s a big mistake, in my view, when you have 7.5 billion people that don’t like you very well and 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they’ve done. I don’t think it’s right, and I don’t think it’s wise.”
In an interview earlier this year, Buffett said tariffs can be an act of economic war. Buffett reiterated these comments on Saturday, saying: “Trade can be an act of war. And I think it’s led to bad things.”
Part of the question touched on Buffett’s 2003 plan to create “import certificates” that would reimagine how trade is accounted for. Buffett said the goal was simply to find a way to balance trade around the world — adding that his longtime partner Charlie Munger considered the idea somewhat of a gimmick.
“Don’t expect my import certificate idea to go down with Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations,'” Buffett quipped.
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