And BNSF Railway reported a slight drop in earnings, largely due to the rising price of gasoline and decrease volumes of shipments.
Nonetheless, in his annual letter to shareholders — a should learn for scores of traders, desirous to glean his ideas on the worldwide state of affairs — Mr. Buffett professed continued religion within the resilience of the US.
“We rely on the American Tailwind and, although it has been becalmed now and again, its propelling pressure has at all times returned,” he wrote. “I’ve but to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term guess in opposition to America.”
A lot of the letter was spent defending Berkshire’s practices.
That included share buybacks, on which the corporate spent $7.9 billion final yr. The observe has drawn criticism from lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who argue that it diverts cash to Wall Road traders as an alternative of to worker pay raises or new investments.
“If you find yourself advised that each one repurchases are dangerous to shareholders or to the nation, or notably useful to C.E.O.s, you might be listening to both an financial illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that aren’t mutually unique),” Mr. Buffett wrote.
He additionally defended Berkshire’s federal tax invoice, amid ongoing criticism that he himself pays little in taxes relative to his total wealth, which Forbes estimates at $106 billion. In his letter, Mr. Buffett stated that Berkshire had paid $32 billion in federal taxes over the previous decade, representing a tenth of 1 % of all taxes that the federal government collected throughout that point.
“Had there been roughly 1,000 taxpayers within the U.S. matching Berkshire’s funds, no different companies nor any of the nation’s 131 million households would have wanted to pay any taxes to the federal authorities,” he wrote. “Not a dime.”
Mr. Buffett added a criticism of the federal authorities for spending considerably greater than it collects in taxes, relating a struggle now effervescent in Washington over the debt ceiling. “Big and entrenched fiscal deficits have penalties,” he wrote.
