Warren Buffett, the famed investor behind Berkshire Hathaway, offered a sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s 25-percent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada set to take effect Tuesday. “They’re an act of war to some degree,” he told CBS on Sunday. “Over time, they’re a tax on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn’t pay them. And then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. And then what?” Trump has said he plans to create an “External Revenue Service” to oversee tariffs, reflecting his oft-repeated and inaccurate claim that tariffs are paid by foreign countries. In fact, they’re a tax paid by American companies, with the costs passed on to consumers. After Trump announced on Monday that he was moving ahead with the tariffs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted by 2 percent. During the CBS interview, Buffett was also asked about Elon Musk, whom the president has put in charge of the cost-cutting task force DOGE, but he just laughed and said he’d “better not get into that.” He’s talked to Musk “a few times,” he said, but when asked again about the SpaceX head’s Washington takeover, he just shook his head.
