(Recasts with announcement of stepping aside as CEO, adds

quotes)

May 3 (Reuters) - Warren Buffett announced he would pass

the reins as CEO to Vice Chairman Greg Abel, as he presided over

his 60th Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A ) shareholder meeting on

Saturday, giving views on everything from trade to investment

opportunities for the conglomerate.

The meeting comes against a backdrop of a rollercoaster

start to the year from markets which have reacted to uncertainty

over trade policies as the Trump administration imposes tariffs.

Buffett said during the meeting he was concerned about

the U.S. deficit and thought the United States faced problems

that need to be solved, including bureaucracy. He said that the

country should be looking to trade with the rest of the world.

Still, he thinks this is the best place in the world to be and

sees opportunities to invest.

At the end of the meeting, he announced his plans to

step aside.

Here are some quotes from Buffett:

ABOUT ABEL TAKING OVER:

"Tomorrow we're having a board meeting of Berkshire and

we have 11 directors. Two of the directors, who are my children,

Howie and Susie, know of what I'm going to talk about. The rest

of them, this will come as news to. I think the time has arrived

where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the

company at year end and ... that is my recommendation. Let them

have the time to think about what questions or what structures

or anything they want. ... I think they'll be unanimously in

favor of it. That would mean that at year end, Greg would be the

chief executive officer of Berkshire and I would still hang

around and conceivably be useful in a few cases but the final

word would be what Greg said, in operations, in capital

deployment, whatever it might be."

"Greg would have the tickets."

ON TRADE:

"Balanced trade is good for the world... Trade can be an act

of war... In the United States, we should be looking to trade

with the rest of the world. We want a prosperous world."

ON U.S. EXCEPTIONALISM

"The luckiest day in my life is the day I was born, you

know, 'cause I was born in the United States."

"I was just lucky... We've gone through all kinds of things

... If I were being born today, you know, I would just keep

negotiating in the womb until (they) said you can be in the

United States. We're all pretty lucky."

"The United States has changed since I was born in 1930.

We've gone through all kinds of things, and we've gone through

great recessions, we've gone through World Wars. We've gone

through the development of an atomic bomb that we never dreamt

of (at the) time I was born. So I would not get discouraged."

ON OPPORTUNITIES:

"We came pretty close to spending $10 billion not that long

ago. We'd spend $100 billion. The one problem with the

investment business is that things don't come along in an

orderly fashion and they never will. We're running a business

which is very, very, very opportunistic."

ON SECURITIES INVESTING VS REAL ESTATE:

"In the United States, there's so much more opportunity that

presents itself in the security market, than... in real estate.

And in real estate you're dealing with ... usually ... a single

owner or a family that owns maybe a large property. They've had

[it for] a long time, maybe they've borrowed too much ... money

against it. Maybe the population trends are against them. But to

them, it's an enormous decision... For a guy of 94, it's not the

most interesting thing to get involved in something where the

negotiations could take years."

ON CURRENCIES:

"Obviously we wouldn't want to be owning anything that we

thought was in a currency that was really going to hell."

"There could be... Things happen in the United States

that... make us want to own a lot of other currencies. I suppose

if we made some very large investment [in a] European country...

there might be a situation where we would do a lot of financing

in their currency."

UNITED STATES FISCAL POLICY:

"Fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States."

ON THE STOCK MARKET'S RECENT MOVES

"This period has been... It's really nothing. This is not a

very dramatic bear market or anything of the sort.

"If you get frightened by markets that decline and get

excited when stock markets go up... People have emotions, but

you've got to check them at the door when you invest."

ON MAKING MONEY:

"You only have to get rich once. I mean, you don't... want

to do anything that risks.

ON OPPORTUNITIES FOR BERKSHIRE WITH ENERGY POLICY:

"The country, for example, needs improvement, rethinking

redirection... it's a problem, something akin to the Interstate

Highway System where [each state] has their own way of thinking

about things.

"There are certain really major investment situations where

we have capital like nobody else has in the private system. We

have particular know-how.. In the whole generation and

transmission arena.

"We are not in the business of trying solve unsolvable

problems.

"It is important that the United States have an intelligent

energy policy, just as it was important during World War Two

that we learned how to make ships instead of cars extremely

fast. And we figured out the answer. We combined private

enterprise with... the power of... government."

ON BERKSHIRE'S FUTURE OPPORTUNITY:

"Berkshire will increase its earning power over time as

we retain money. We are doing things, making decisions every

day... We will build the earnings power, but it won't be coming

in an even stream."

"We will make our best deals when people are the most

pessimistic."

ON CAPITALISM:

"Capitalism in the United States has succeeded like

nothing you've ever seen, but it has what it is, is a

combination of this magnificent cathedral, which is produced on

the economy like nothing... the world's ever seen. And then it's

got this massive casino attached."

ASKED ABOUT DOGE:

"I think that bureaucracy is something that is amazingly

prominent and contagious... and big corporations...

overwhelmingly, most of them look like they could be run

better."

ABOUT THE U.S. DEFICIT

"We're operating at a fiscal deficit now that is

unsustainable over a very long period of time. We don't know

whether that means two years or 20 years ... because there's

never been a country like the United States, but you know, this

is something can't go on forever. We are doing something that is

unsustainable and it has the aspect to it that it gets

uncontrollable to a certain point.

"I wouldn't want the job trying to correct what's going

on.

It's a job I don't want, but it's a job I think should be

done, and Congress does not seem good at doing it. We've got a

lot of problems always as a country, but this is one we bring on

ourselves... If you picked a way to screw it up, it would

involve the currency... That's happened a lot of places.