JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon restricted his criticism of President Donald Trump in a question-and-answer session at Davos on Wednesday – with one notable exception.
Trump’s plan for a ten% cap on bank card rates of interest, Dimon mentioned, “would be an economic disaster.”
Speaking on the on the World Economic Summit in Switzerland, Dimon averted taking a stance on a lot of Trump’s insurance policies, together with immigration, commerce and soured relations with Europe and NATO over his calls for for the United States to annex Greenland. He even dodged a query about whether or not US CEOs are scared to criticize Trump.
But the top of the biggest US financial institution wasn’t restrained on a doable one-year, 10% cap on bank card rates of interest. Trump earlier this month called for such a policy, saying in a social media post that the American public was being “ripped off.”
Trump advised the Davos gathering later within the day that he deliberate to ask Congress to move a one-year cap.
Dimon predicted widespread ache all through the US financial system ought to the proposal go into impact.
“We (JPMorgan Chase) would survive it, by the way,” he mentioned. “(But) it would remove credit from 80% of Americans. And that is their backup credit.”
Dimon additionally urged testing the ten% cap in a couple of states earlier than rolling it out nationally. He recognized two represented by extra outspoken liberal senators – Vermont, represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts, represented by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He mentioned these on the political left “would learn a real lesson” from such an experiment.
“The people crying the most won’t be the credit card companies,” Dimon predicted. “It’ll be the restaurants, the retailers, the travel companies, the schools, the municipalities because people will miss their water payments and this payment and that payment. It would be something else to watch.”
Dimon added, nevertheless, that he didn’t assume a nationwide cap on charges would ever get handed by Congress.
But Dimon mentioned different questions didn’t have yes-or-no solutions, together with if the Trump administration’s international coverage was making the world safer and stronger.
“You guys always want a binary answer to everything,” Dimon mentioned. “Is this a good foreign policy? I don’t know yet.”
Dimon added that whereas he had questions on immigration enforcement actions, he famous he had equal criticism for the Biden administration’s immigration document.
“I think it’s time for people to take a little bit of a deep breath,” he mentioned. “That does not mean I like it all.”
Dimon additionally advocated for authorities motion to cushion the blow of job losses due to AI.
“As a business person, my view is, don’t put your head in the sand,” he mentioned. “We are going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. We’ll add some jobs probably.”
Dimon, nevertheless, mentioned governments ought to take steps to each supply assist for those that lose their jobs because of AI and incentives to companies so that they don’t make huge job cuts main to “social unrest.”
“I do think (the rollout of AI) may go too fast for society,” he mentioned. “And if it goes too fast for society, that’s where government and business can collaborate together.”
Asked if he wished governments to inform him couldn’t lay off folks at JPMorgan Chase, he responded, “We would agree,” earlier than including “if we have to do that to save society.”
“I think it should be done at more of a local level where someone says to a JPMorgan, ‘Can we give you incentives to put in place to retrain these people, can you slow this down and give people income assistance?’ Yeah, we can do stuff like that,” he clarified.