Warren Buffet is a very successful investor in the current world order. We know he has his likes and dislikes but why would he describe a tariff as “an act of war”? There is more to the story.
He’s benefited a lot from the post Bretton Woods world order.
He makes money by buying and holding securities of (mainly) American corporations with a moat (regulatory i.e. banking or through good marketing aka propaganda i.e. Coke )
Companies with a moat can raise their prices in line with or even to outpace inflation. Companies with government connections (regulated financial institutions, insurance companies etc) benefit from the Cantillon Effect which means they get printed money before anybody else and so make their profits after the currency is debased (money printing) but before the debasement shows up as price inflation.
Whether by accident or design, Buffet’s system has benefited greatly from the post war dollar hegemony. He’s benefited from large corporations feeding off the government trough. He’s benefited from outsourcing American middle class jobs and mass immigration to suppress wages and keep the printed money for the connected classes and not have to share with the labor force. He’s benefited from the era of mass communications as ad agencies run sophisticated psychological operations daily to convince you that you need to drink Coke or wear Nike and that anything without these brands, even if cheaper, shouldn’t be purchased.
So it’s no surprises that Buffet is completely regime aligned and would dearly like to preserve the consensus of the post WW2 American hegemony. He wants to continue with money printing, dollar dominance, labor force suppression through mass immigration and job outsourcing, and of course free and unrestricted trade which facilitates capital allocators to arbitrage jurisdictions, keep input costs (i.e. wages) low, and deliver newly printed dollars into the pockets of shareholders.
What Buffet does not want is a return to a hard money standard that would make it more difficult to engineer financial shenanigans.
So if you follow the incentives I think it’s pretty clear why Buffet is a fan of treasuries and equities and why Buffet does not think much of Bitcoin (or gold). And also why he doesn’t like tariffs or Trump.