When Warren Buffett takes the stage Saturday at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, he will have the investing world’s full attention—all the more so because he has avoided the spotlight lately.
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive, has refrained from opining on President Trump’s trade war or the economy’s uncertain outlook, and shared few thoughts on Berkshire’s most dramatic investment move of the past year: slashing its Apple stake but keeping the iPhone maker as its biggest stockholding as of December.
Now, with volatility shaking markets, many are preparing to parse Buffett’s remarks at the shareholder meeting in Omaha, Neb., for clues about how he thinks the U.S. tariffs and other nations’ responses will affect business and the economy as well as for insights about the path ahead for Berkshire itself.
At age 94, Buffett is Wall Street’s elder statesman. His record building Berkshire from a struggling textile maker to the most valuable U.S. company outside of technology has persuaded investors well beyond his shareholder base to listen when he speaks.
Over the decades, he has seldom held his tongue—whether it was encouraging investors to buy U.S. stocks in the depths of the 2008-09 financial crisis, criticizing Wall Street for its fees and tactics or calling the cryptocurrency bitcoin “rat poison squared.”
In this unusual moment for the economy and markets, some observers of Buffett are eager to hear his perspective on the Trump administration’s tariff rollout—but they don’t necessarily expect a harsh critique. Buffett is often candid, but rarely spoiling for a public spat, and may be even less inclined to provoke a president given to airing grievances on social media.
“He’s got such vast knowledge and can put these things into context,” said Darren Pollock, portfolio manager at Cheviot Value Management. “I’d love to hear his thoughts but I’m not holding my breath because I don’t think he wants to be critical in a public manner.”
Asked about tariffs during a television interview earlier this year, Buffett called such levies “an act of war, to some degree.” Hungry for more, observers have dug up a 2003 article in which Buffett suggested the U.S. seek to remedy its trade deficit through a system of tradable import certificates that he acknowledged would be a “tariff called by another name.”
Trade isn’t the only hot topic on which the famed investor has held his peace lately.
Beyond a hint about tax considerations at last year’s annual meeting, Buffett hasn’t explained why his company sold much of its huge stake in Apple—or why it apparently stopped selling in the final months of 2024.
In some respects, the timing of the sales couldn’t have been better. Berkshire’s investment had ballooned in value as Apple’s shares soared in recent years. The company then unloaded two-thirds of its stake not long before the iPhone maker’s star dimmed. Apple shares have slumped 18% from their December record, weighed down by tariff uncertainty and other challenges.
At the same time, some observers have wondered about the decision to hold off on further sales in last year’s fourth quarter, as Apple shares rose to their all-time high. The consumer-electronics company remained Berkshire’s largest stockholding, valued at $75 billion when the year ended.
As Berkshire’s Apple stake shrank, its hoard of cash and Treasury bills grew to unprecedented levels, reaching a record $321 billion at the end of last year after accounting for a payable for purchasing the short-term government debt. That was the highest as a percentage of company assets in data going back to 1998, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
In his widely-read annual letter, Buffett played down the growth in cash, saying the great majority of shareholders’ money remained in equities when considering Berkshire’s subsidiary companies as well as its stock portfolio.
“Berkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities—mostly American equities although many of these will have international operations of significance,” he wrote.
At an uncertain time for markets, Berkshire’s mountain of cash and its diversified portfolio of businesses have drawn investors to the stock. Class A and B shares are up 17% this year, compared with a 4.7% decline in the S&P 500.
Besides leaving no question that Berkshire can meet its obligations, the cash pile equips Buffett to pounce should he spot an attractive deal. And if market volatility triggers a financial crisis, Berkshire would be equipped to aid other companies—for a price. Back in 2008, Berkshire made investments in Goldman Sachs and General Electric, followed by Bank of America in 2011.
Buffett’s audience Saturday will extend beyond those focused on their investments in Berkshire. If he weighs in on global trade, those remarks will likely resonate throughout the investing world
Days after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, Berkshire batted down a claim, amplified by Trump, that Buffett supported the effort. The president had shared another user’s social-media post with a video claiming Buffett said Trump was “making the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.”
The company issued a terse statement saying all reports circulating on social media about comments purportedly made by Buffett were false.
In a CBS News interview earlier this year, Buffett referred to tariffs as “an act of war, to some degree.” Asked how tariffs would affect inflation, he replied: “Over time they’re a tax on goods. The tooth fairy doesn’t pay ’em.”
Over the years, Buffett has voiced concern that the U.S. trade deficit could lead to consequences including a weakening of the dollar. In the 2003 article in Fortune magazine, he proposed the U.S. seek to balance its foreign trade by issuing certificates that would be required to import goods.
Giving the certificates to U.S. exporters who could then sell them to parties wanting to bring goods into the country would allow American producers to cut their prices in international markets, he wrote. That would make U.S. output more competitive and result in an expansion of exports. But he acknowledged that the prices of most imported products would increase.
“My remedy may sound gimmicky, and in truth it is a tariff called by another name,” Buffett wrote in the decades-old article. “But this is a tariff that retains most free-market virtues, neither protecting specific industries nor punishing specific countries nor encouraging trade wars.”