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Business|Whatever You Do, Don’t Ask Wall Street Bosses About Trump’s Tariffs
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/business/banks-tariffs-dimon-trump-trade.html
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JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, known for his frankness, is tiptoeing around tariffs as he and other leaders of big banks reveal their latest earnings.
April 11, 2025Updated 3:22 p.m. ET
Wall Street’s biggest firms on Friday attempted the tricky two-step of revealing the toll of President Trump’s whiplash tariff policy without outright criticizing a man who has repeatedly tangled with the financial industry for slights both real and imagined.
“Obviously,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive said in a conference call with reporters, “the China stuff is significant. We don’t know the full effect.”
“We support the administration’s willingness to look at barriers to fair trade for the United States,” Charlie Scharf, chief executive of Wells Fargo, said in a statement, “though there are certainly risks associated with such significant actions.”
In its push for tariffs, the United States has become “the global destabilizer,” said BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink.
Friday’s careful choreography came at the start of earnings season, a quarterly ritual in which publicly traded firms disclose their financial results and, in many cases, give projections. It’s not typically of interest for many people other than professional investors, but it took on new importance and anticipation this week with the market turmoil that has accompanied the escalating trade war between the United States and its major trading partners.
The spotlight was particularly focused on JPMorgan, the largest bank in the country, which was among several lenders announcing quarterly results on Friday. Its leader, Mr. Dimon, styles himself as a frank speaker and has publicly said he puts his country above his job.
