Warren Buffett, the CEO of investment company Berkshire Hathaway, said Saturday, May 3 that he intends to retire at the end of the year. The announcement was made during the company’s annual meeting.
Shortly after the 94-year-old publicly expressed his most blunt opinions of the Trump administration’s tariffs to date.
Buffett, recognized as the world’s fourth-richest person as of April, said Greg Abel, who currently serves as the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway’s non-insurance operations, should assume his position.
“I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” Buffett said.
Abel has been with the company since 2000 and has been part of Buffett’s succession plan since 2021. At the 2023 annual meeting, Buffett said Abel is even better than him in some areas.
Buffett’s retirement announcement came as a shock to most, as he has long maintained he would never retire unless he were incapacitated. Despite using a cane, the investor has said he is still in relatively good health.
Buffett addresses Trump’s tariffs
The announcement was not the only public statement to make headlines Saturday. Earlier in his address, Buffett shared his most blunt opinion to date of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs, saying “trade should not be a weapon” but “there’s no question that trade can be an act of war.”
“It’s a big mistake in my view when you have 7.5 billion people who don’t like you very well, and you have 300 million who are crowing about how they have done,” Buffett added.
He didn’t fully rebuke the idea, saying it is important that trade between countries is well-balanced. However, the sheer magnitude and indiscriminate nature of President Donald Trump’s plan is not good for anyone, Buffett argued.
“We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. We should do what we do best and they should do what they do best,” he said.
Despite all of this, Buffett likened the current political and economic climate to the “revolutionary changes” America has always gone through. Buffett added that if he were born today, he would “just keep negotiating in the womb until they said, ‘You could be in the United States.’”
Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting is attended by upwards of 40,000 people, including celebrities and high-profile investors. Hillary Clinton, the last politician to be publicly endorsed by Buffett, was at Saturday’s event.
