Trump and Allies Claim Warren Buffett Backed Tariff Policy — Not True
By Macrina Wang
What happened: Conservative accounts are spreading the false claim that renowned investor Warren Buffett called President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs “the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.”
Among those spreading the claim is Trump himself.
A closer look: After Trump announced a round of tariffs on Canada and Mexico in early March, Brian Decker, a prolific cryptocurrency and finance commentator, told his 235,000 Instagram followers in a March 13 video:
“Trump is crashing the stock market by 20 percent this month, but he’s doing it on purpose. And this is why Warren Buffett just said Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in 50 years.”
Decker went on to claim in the video that Trump was intentionally crashing the stock market in order to push cash into Treasury securities — debt instruments that finance government spending — to ultimately force the U.S. Federal Reserve to slash interest rates.
In early April 2025, another video, created by TikTok user @wnnsa11, integrated the audio of Decker speaking about Buffett and the Trump tariffs alongside stock images of Trump.
You can watch that video here:
The @wnnsa11 TikTok video received 3.2 million views and 111,100 likes, while another user who posted the video to X garnered 3 million views and 47,000 likes.
Trump himself posted the TikTok video to his Truth Social profile without a caption on April 4, attracting 24,000 likes and 5,900 reposts on the platform.
Actually: Buffett, who leads multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway and is one of the most widely quoted investors in the world, made no such statement praising Trump or tariffs.
The same day that Trump shared the video on April 4, Berkshire Hathaway said in a news release: “There are reports currently circulating on social media (including Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok) regarding comments allegedly made by Warren E. Buffett. All such reports are false.”
Decker has since edited the description of his Instagram post to acknowledge, “The comment from Warren Buffet [sic] is incorrect.” He claimed in the revised caption that he saw the fake Buffett comment on X, although NewsGuard did not find any X posts with the alleged comment published ahead of Decker’s video.
As of April 10, Buffett has not publicly commented on Trump’s tariff decisions.
On April 4, Buffett told CNBC (Trust Score: 95/100) business reporter Becky Quick that he would not speak publicly about the markets, the economy, or tariffs until Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting on May 3.