For Warren Buffett, "trade should not be a weapon"

Businessman Warren Buffett said on Saturday that "trade should not be a weapon," criticizing the trade war launched by Donald Trump since his return to the White House.

"There is no question" that interfering with trade, particularly through tariffs, "can be an act of war," Warren Buffett commented on Saturday at the annual meeting of his conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway.

Two months earlier, the investor had already made similar comments in an interview on American television, adding that customs duties "constitute a tax on goods" and that "it is not the tooth fairy who pays them." The billionaire, who continues to lead his group at the age of 94, did not directly mention Donald Trump or his administration on Saturday.

But, according to him, Washington should "seek to trade with the rest of the world." "We want a prosperous world," and moving in that direction "will not be at the expense" of the United States, assured Warren Buffett. "That's a big mistake, in my opinion, when you have seven and a half billion people who don't like you very much and you have 300 million who are bragging in one way or another about their success," the investor judged.

On the other hand, according to Warren Buffett, the financial markets' woes and investors' nervousness about the trade war and its twists and turns "are really nothing." On Saturday, Berkshire Hathaway reported a first-quarter profit of $9.6 billion, a sharp decline (-14%). On a per-share basis and excluding exceptional items, the market's most closely scrutinized metric, it came to $4.47, also a sharp decline.

Warren Buffett has successfully transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a textile SME acquired in the mid-1960s into a gigantic conglomerate, now valued at over $1 trillion and currently sitting on over $300 billion in cash.