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 lashed out at the financial world for slights both real and imagined.
“The economy is facing considerable turbulence,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The 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 besides 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 stage was set in particular for JPMorgan, the largest bank in the country, and Mr. Dimon, who has styled himself as a frank speaker and publicly said he puts his country above his job. In his annual shareholder letter, released on Monday, he warned that Mr. Trump’s saber rattling could damage America’s standing in the world. Two days later, he talked up the benefits of some tariffs on Fox Business in a rare interview that Mr. Trump later said he watched shortly before announcing a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries except China.
On Friday morning, Mr. Dimon was back to being bearish on tariffs, saying in a statement accompanying his bank’s earnings that there were “potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars.’” He will no doubt elaborate on that as he takes questions from the media and Wall Street analysts later in the day. In one indication of how the bank is steeling itself, JPMorgan said it had added nearly half a billion dollars to its financial cushion for losses from customers who can’t pay credit card debts and loans.
Leaders at Wells Fargo, which reported its latest earnings on Friday, “expect continued volatility and uncertainty and are prepared for a slower economic environment,” Charlie Scharf, the bank’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We support the administration’s willingness to look at barriers to fair trade for the United States, though there are certainly risks associated with such significant actions,” he added.
Asked if corporate customers were reacting to the market volatility this week by stockpiling cash or drawing down their credit lines, Michael Santomassimo, Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer, said: “It’s just too early to see big changes in behavior as a result of what’s happening.”
Although financial titans have flashed some anger over the uncertainty created by tariff policy, they are wary of a threat in the air that has nothing to do with the economy. Mr. Trump has lashed out at Wall Street for the purported practice of “debanking,” or the closing of customer accounts. The first lady, Melania Trump, has claimed without evidence that their son Barron was denied an account.
Last month, the Trump Organization sued Capital One for shutting its accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bank didn’t give a reason, other than saying that as a rule it doesn’t consider politics in its operating decisions.
“It’s not smart to criticize the president,” said Robert K. Steel, a veteran Wall Street executive and top Treasury Department official under President George W. Bush.
Thus, many on Wall Street are most comfortable sticking to language so neutral it says almost nothing at all. Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the asset management giant, said in a statement on Friday that “uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations.”
Stacy Cowley contributed reporting.
