OMAHA, Neb. (Reuters) - Billionaire Warren Buffett on Saturday said it is unlikely that the United States and China will come to loggerheads on trade, and the countries would avoid doing “something extremely foolish.”
“The United States and China are going to be the two superpowers of the world, economically and in other ways, for a long, long, long time,” Buffett said at Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s annual shareholder meeting, and that any tensions should not jeopardize the win-win benefits from trade.
“It is just too big and too obvious ... that the benefits are huge and the world is dependent on it in a major way for its progress, that two intelligent countries (would) do something extremely foolish,” he said. “We both may do things that are mildly foolish from time to time. There is some give and take.”
The Trump administration has drawn a hard line in trade talks with China, demanding a $200-billion cut in the Chinese trade surplus with the United States, sharply lower tariffs and advanced technology subsidies, people familiar with the talks said on Friday.
Buffett, 87, and his longtime partner and fellow billionaire Charlie Munger, 94, also took pointed questions on Wells Fargo & Co, politics, guns, healthcare and their investment choices from shareholders, journalists and analysts at the Berkshire meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
Buffett defended Wells Fargo and its chief executive, Tim Sloan, in response to a question asking when Berkshire would ditch the bank, one of its largest common stock holdings. Many shareholders applauded the question.
He said the bank committed the “cardinal sin” of incentivizing employees
