Warren Buffett Says Free Trade Has Turned American Workers Into Roadkill

Warren Buffett likened American workers who have seen their jobs and factories destroyed by global trade to animals slaughtered by cars and trucks on the highway.

“Nobody should be roadkill,” Buffet said Saturday at the festival-like annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska.

 .. But if I own a good insurance company, I can diversify away the problems. If you’re a 55-year-old steelworker, you can’t diversify away your talents. I mean, you had it if steel or textiles or shoes become subject to total, it all moves offshore. So you want to have free trade, but you also have to take care of the people who, through no fault of their own, have spent their life learning one profession. And you can talk about retraining and all that, but it just isn’t practical.
.. And a rich country that’s prospering because of free trade, and as the world is prospering, should keep the free trade as much as possible. But they also should take care of the people that become the roadkill, you know, when an industry moves.