So, while the new Trump tariffs continue to cause the stock market to be extremely volatile, that's putting it mild mildly. Uh, I received a comment from one of our Discord members. This was in the video suggestions tab. We had Mark the Shark ask, "Hey, uh, just watched your latest video on the Trump tariffs and stock market falling. You mentioned the Buffett motto of be greedy when others are fearful." And so I'm curious what Warren Buffett might think about this entire situation. Not sure if he's even commented about it yet, but I'd love to see a video of what you think he'd say or how he'd feel about it and whether or not it's a buying opportunity. Thank you. Big fan. Love everything you put out. Well, thank you, Mark. That's an incredibly nice comment and I really appreciate your support and I am more than happy to make this video for you. Great suggestion, by the way, and I really love actually how you expanded on it and wrote a lot there in the comments. I'm always going to give priority to detailed comments like that because it does make my job a lot easier to structure a whole video for you if you detail exactly what you're asking for and you even give some insight on it, maybe how you feel about it, too. That always helps me out a lot. But uh yeah, just to kind of break this down for you, I think the easiest way to make this video will be to first cover what if anything Buffett has said about this new tariff situation and and the volatile market. And then we can cover what he said in the past and how it relates to what's going on today. And then we can also finish up with what Buffett is actually doing himself now and why he's actually performing so much better than other billionaire investors out there. Something I found out doing research for this video and yeah, it's going to be pretty interesting. So, you're not going to want to miss it. It's going to be a ton of fun in this video. Let's just go ahead and jump straight into it. Now, unfortunately here, Buffett has stayed fairly quiet during this rising tariffs environment. not really saying anything about either the tariffs or the stock market, which has been struggling. In fact, Berkshire Hathaway even issued a statement clarifying that any reports suggesting otherwise are false. Apparently, there was uh some social media posts going around saying that Buffett was in favor of these tariffs, but these posts do appear to be fake. And so Bergkshire had to basically come out and say, quote, "There are reports currently circulating on social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok regarding comments allegedly made by Warren Buffett. All such reports are false." And on top of that, CNBC also spoke to Buffett directly about that statement to which Buffett said that uh those are false rumors and that he won't even be making any statements or commentary on the markets, the economy or the tariffs until Berkshire's annual meeting on May 3rd. So in other words, we we do just kind of have to wait until May to get Buffett's full opinion on this entire situation. However, there's two things that we can already look at now to see where Buffett likely stands on all of this. Number one is what he recently said about tariffs only about a month ago, and number two is what he said about them in the more distant past. Okay, so what did he say about it uh about a month ago? Well, in early March when Trump was already threatening tariffs, and it's of course, you know, something that he's ran on during his entire campaign. Well, Buffett said this quote, "Tariffs are actually, we've had a lot of experience with them. They are an act of war to some degree. Over time, they are attacks on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn't pay them." And then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. You always say, "And then what?" So, yeah, obviously a pretty negative view on tariffs from Buffett there. And actually, if you remember back in around 2018, 2019, there was a similar situation going on between Trump and China. This was during Trump's first term where he was raising tariffs and the market was dropping hard because it was fearing a trade war. And back then, Buffett also had a similarly negative view on the entire situation. Plus, you also have to keep in mind that Buffett himself does a ton of business in and with China because of how massively large, you know, of a conglomerate Brookshire Hathaway really is. So, they do business all over the world and they invest in tons of different stocks, a lot of Chinese ones. So, yeah, I can imagine that uh taxing those businesses and dragging the stock market lower is definitely not something that, you know, someone like Warren Buffett would be too happy about. However, there is one more interesting piece to all of this and that's that uh that's what Buffett has historically said further back in history where he was actually very critical of our uh trade deficit and he even suggested something that he himself referred to as a sort of tarifflike solution to the problem. Kind of crazy. Now, this doesn't get reported on much, but if you go back to around 2003, he wrote an article for Fortune magazine, it was titled, "America's growing trade deficit in se uh is selling the nation out from under us. Here's a way to fix the problem, and we need to do it now." And so in that article, Buffett pointed to our growing trade deficits and international investments that are, in his words, quote, inevitably putting an ever larger slice of America in foreign hands, which as a solution to, he suggested a remedy that again he himself referred to as quote, "In truth, it is a tariff called by another name, but one that would retain quote uh it would quote retain most free market virtues, neither protecting specific industries nor punishing specific countries nor encouraging trade wars to which he called this remedy quote in import certificates or IC's for short that would be uh really issued to all US exporters in an amount equal to the dollar value of their exports which they could then sell to importers who are required to purchase IC's to match the value of the goods that uh they bring in to America. Therefore, you know, at least in theory, ensuring that we actually have balanced trade going out and coming in. And I actually kind of like that solution, but unfortunately, I'm not really sure how well it would even work because it was never really tried. I think a few years later after Buffett wrote that article, a similar proposal was sent to Congress, but they immediately shut it down arguing that it could cause a trade war and would be too complex to even integrate. So, we've just kind of carried on with our massive trade deficits ever since with no real solutions ever being, you know, offered or implemented, specifically implemented. Again, though, overall, it still seems like Buffett is pretty anti-tariffs, at least at the moment, right now. And while both Republicans and Democrats have always agreed that our growing trade deficits are a very real concern for America, they ultimately disagree on how to solve that. With Trump obviously wanting to use tariffs now and Democrats wanting a a different solution that in their view wouldn't hurt the country by so much and risk, you know, crashing the global economy. Whoever is right about that though, I'll leave that up to you guys because this is not a political channel and I'm not interested in taking sides on such a controversial subject. But with that said, one thing that is very clear is that Buffett is actually doing much better than most rich elites this year during the market downturn. as he is reportedly the only one of the top 10 richest people in the world to actually see his net worth go up while the rest saw gigantic declines of more than $300 billion combined according to Bloomberg with Elon Musk down $130 billion year to date, Jeff Bezos down over 45 billion and Mark Zuckerberg down over 28 billion. But meanwhile, Warren Buffett actually gained almost $13 billion. How crazy is that? And the reasons why are actually very simple. I'll just give you three basic ones right now. Number one, when the market was trading at record highs, uh, and everyone was kind of acting, let's say, a little more greedy than fearful, well, Buffett was a net seller of stocks. In fact, he dumped $143 billion worth of stocks just in 2024 alone. And he was also a net seller for the year at $134 billion. In fact, he was a net seller in four of the past five years too. And thus he not only reduced his exposure to you know especially the most vulnerable sectors in an uh economic or kind of markets downturn but it also led to reason number two which is that that monumental sale of stocks also boosted his cash reserves by insane amounts too bringing Bergkshire's cash pile up to over $334 billion by the end of last year. That's almost double what it was the year before. And that liquidity ultimately really provided them with a sort of buffer against market fluctuations while positioning the company to now really be able to seize any investment opportunities that they've been coming across which I think we're going to be seeing the effects of in the coming months and years. In fact, one such move that uh they also made was that they halted all of their own stock repurchases in the final two quarters of last year. So, if the market comes down now, well, they'll likely be able to buy back shares at an even bigger discount. And again, that's on top of any other investments that they can make, including, you know, probably some major acquisitions of other companies depending on, you know, how bad things get. But finally, that leaves me with reason number three, and that's that not only did Buffett have less exposure to this downturn, but uh because he's invested in so many dividend paying stocks throughout history and other much more boring but also much more stable and income generating assets over the years, well, it's resulted in him being one of the biggest income and dividend collecting investors in the world. In other words, while most other growth and tech heavy investors have been, you know, losing a ton of money this year, well, Buffett instead maintained a ton of his grow a ton of his worth while also collecting income from his various assets and investments. And thus, it's resulted in him actually making money this year. And now he's arguably in, you know, maybe the best position of anyone in the world to go out there and be able to make new acquisitions and new purchases, especially if the market keeps falling, which is something he's always preached that when the market comes down, you know, that that's the a good opportunity to be greedy when others are fearful and go out there and buy uh, you know, stocks and everything else. So that's probably what's going to be happening, you know, throughout the year, assuming the market continues to fall, which, you know, is why to this day so many people just still consider Buffett to be the GOAT when it comes to long-term investing, the guy is actually making money when most of his peers are losing money. And it's really because um even though his strategies can seem a little boring at times, you just can't argue with Buffett's results long term. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his motives or decisions or anything else, at 94 years of age, he is still proving to be one of the greatest investors of all time. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this video and if you got some information from it, I would really appreciate it if you subscribe to my channel because we talk about stocks all the time. It's a ton of fun and I'd love to have you here, too. But thanks again for stopping by and for watching the video, my friends. I hope that you're all doing well, staying safe out there, and uh and I'll be here with you all along the way. I'll catch you in the next video. All right, take care everybody. Bye-bye.