Jamie Dimon on the Economy, U.S.-China, Overseas Wars and More: Full Interview | WSJ
Emma Tucker: All right. So Jamie Dimon, thank you very much for sitting down with us-
Jamie Dimon: My pleasure.
Emma Tucker: ... today. I spent a lot of time this weekend reading your letter and my biggest takeaway from it was that you have a very clear sense of what's good for America, what's good for the economy, and what's good for JP Morgan. So I've got some questions here, they're short questions that require short answers.
Jamie Dimon: Okay, I'll try.
Emma Tucker: So off I go. How many days should people be in the office?
Jamie Dimon: Five is ideal. There are some jobs where taking a day or two at home is fine. It's very job specific.
Emma Tucker: Are America's downtowns dead?
Jamie Dimon: No. I think some are going to have difficulty because of their own policies, but no.
Emma Tucker: If you're a young person and you want to work at JP Morgan, what should you study at college?
Jamie Dimon: It almost doesn't matter to tell you the truth because you're looking for smart, ethical, decent people, but I do think in business you should learn the language of business, which is accounting and learn a little basic business. So I think it would help to do accounting, finance, markets, something like that.
Kate Linebaugh: Their conversation went beyond career advice. They dug into the presidential election, into geopolitics, and of course whether there will actually be a soft landing. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Friday, April 26th. Coming up on the show, an interview with JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon.
Emma Tucker: As the chief exec of America's biggest bank, you have an unrivaled insight into the financial health of the U.S. consumer. What are people doing with their money right now?
Jamie Dimon: Yeah. You have to look a little bit in context. The consumer's in pretty good shape right now. Unemployment's under 4%, it's been there for two years. They still have excess money from COVID. If you go back to looking at the amount of money that was spent during COVID, it was $6 trillion. Through various means and various programs, they're still spending it down. Housing prices are up, stock prices are up, jobs are plentiful, wages are fine going up at the low end. The consumer's in pretty good shape. Because of that, business is in pretty good shape too because people spend, it creates profits. I would say the one thing you got to be cautious about, a lot of it's driven by just fiscal spending. That's driving a lot of this growth, and that will have other consequences possibly down the road called inflation, which may not go away like people expect. So when I look at the range of possible outcomes, you can have that soft landing. I'm a little more worried that it may not be so soft and inflation may not quite go away people expect. I'm not talking about just this year, I'm talking about '25 and '26. The rates may have to go up a little higher, I'm talking about the 10-year rate, the five-year rate, and that can have consequences. So we'll see.
Emma Tucker: But right now you describe a pretty rosy picture, and yet we know consumers aren't feeling it, they're feeling glum. Why this disconnect?
Jamie Dimon: Yeah. Well, you have to look at different consumers here. So the bottom 20% of America have not done particularly well over the last 20 years. Incomes barely went up. They're actually starting to go up for the first time in almost 20 years. Remember suicide, fentanyl, crime, inflation, there are a lot of negative effects. Some people can't get mortgages, can't buy the home, so yeah, there's part of society who's kind of struggling. There's part of society who's not.
Emma Tucker: So just to go back to the soft landing. In the letter you concede you were on the hawkish side, but then things played out in a more benign fashion, but still it's a slightly begrudging concession. You yourself sound quite glum in the letter. Can you tell us a bit more about why that is?
Jamie Dimon: Yeah. So I'm not looking at a year and I'm not making a forecast. I'm trying to say what are the range of possible outcomes? Last year and this year I would put out the same issues. Huge amount of fiscal deficit, a lot of things in the future are inflationary, the green economy, the remilitarization of the world, obviously the deficits, which basically aren't going to go away as far as the eye can see, and geopolitics. All that puts me on the side of caution that things may not go as well as people expect. And we'll see. But I don't really know ... As a business person, I try to be prepared for all of that, just a little cautious. It looks a little bit more like the '70s to me, and I point out to a lot of people, things looked pretty rosy in 1972. They were not rosy in 1973. So don't get lulled into a false sense of security because the today looks okay that tomorrow's going to be okay.
Emma Tucker: Do you think Jerome Powell's doing a job as chairman of the Fed?
Jamie Dimon: I have tremendous respect for Jay. I think the Fed was probably late in raising rates, they caught up. They're probably wait, right, and watching right now. We don't know what's going to happen. You might as well wait. It's very hard to forecast the future. I've always told the Fed they should stop forecasting. I mean, obviously they're data dependent. When someone makes a statement, we're data dependent, what are they going to say? No matter what the data says, we do what we want anyway. They can't. So they should wait and see. But they may have to get a little bit tougher.
Kate Linebaugh: In his letter to shareholders, Dimon said the American economy is in a delicate balance, and the biggest threat to that balance comes from outside the country.
Jamie Dimon: That's what worries me the most is that the Ukraine war, the terrorist activities in Israel, the thread that's drawing between Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, the difficulties of our old age with China, that whole thing is challenging. But we were called the free democratic Western world. And that to me is the most important thing that we get all of that right.
Emma Tucker: If we focus first on the Middle East, do you think that the U.S. position towards the Israel-Hamas war is the right one?
Jamie Dimon: I think Israel has the right to defend itself. I think war is a terrible thing. I think people have to be honest about what war is when they look at these civilian deaths and all the things like that. So I don't know the specifics of the military. I think the notion that they aren't going to defend themselves is wrong. So I'll leave the military experts to decide what's the right way to go do that.
Emma Tucker: And then we've got a war in Ukraine as well where Ukraine clearly is struggling against Russia. What would it mean for the global economy if Russia was to win?
Jamie Dimon: It could be, again, I'm going to put odds in this. It could be a potential disaster because this is the first war in Europe, a free democratic nation invaded by two or 300,000 Russian soldiers under the threat of nuclear blackmail. Obviously NATO is rearming right now. But the other thing is affecting all alliances. So all military alliances, all global economic alliances, the nexus of Iran, North Korea and China makes it very hard, in my view, for the Chinese American relationship because we're kind of on different sides of that. They say they're neutral, whether they're helping or not. We are clearly not neutral. So I'm a little worried that if Russia wins that war, you're going to see the world enter a little bit of chaos as people realign alliances and economic relationships, et cetera.
Emma Tucker: So China's complicated obviously because on the one hand we have so much trade with China, the supply chains are integrated. But at the same time, we reported recently that China is aiding the Russian war effort and there's now a proposal by the U.S. to sanction Chinese banks. What do you make of that? I mean, what do you think of that approach to China? How should the U.S. approach China?
Jamie Dimon: I would tell America, take a deep breath. China imports 11 million barrels of oil a day, I believe half of which go through the Red Sea of the Straits of Hormuz, which are guarded by American warships. So we're in a very good position. We have to restructure trade around national security, kind of a no-brainer like anything that we need for rare earths for F-35s, the ingredients for pharmaceuticals, important semiconductors and related where it might be used for military purposes, you could put AI in there and lithium and some other things. Obviously we should resource, friendly source, or something like that. I would engage with China. I would have very tough conversation about what we're willing to do, what we're not willing to do. I would do it with our allies in mind, not America our way or the highway type of thing. And I don't want to tear us under the economic relationships either. So we should be very thoughtful. So I would negotiate them around all of that. I'm glad they're doing it. So if you listen to Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Janet Yellen, they're starting to engage and they should. And they should be quite clear what we need, what we want, and we should listen to them. They may have legitimate issues and legitimate complaints and do it as best we can.
Kate Linebaugh: After the break, Jamie Dimon's thoughts on the presidential election.
Emma Tucker: So I want to turn now to domestic matters and the forthcoming election. We're in the very unusual position of knowing what a Trump presidency looks like. We know what a Biden presidency looks like. Who's the best candidate for the economy for 2024?
Jamie Dimon: Okay. I'm not going to go into that kind of thing right now. And whoever is president, we will try to help. I really would hope that whoever's president tries to reach out to the other side, that Trump puts some Democrats in his cabinet. Maybe Biden would put some Republicans in the candidate. I would like them to put a lot of experts around them. Not just academic, but practitioners in the real world because I think it matters, and to get policies that are good for both America and the world. And that's what I would hope.
Emma Tucker: How about you as one of the experts? I know your name has come up in the context of a new treasury secretary or was it Fed chairman? Sorry. Fed chairman.
Jamie Dimon: I would not do Fed chairman. Treasury secretary, I don't think I'd ever be picked for that.
Emma Tucker: Still on the election, critics of Donald Trump, they don't just disagree with him. They think he's a threat to stability. He's a threat even to democracy. What do you make of that?
Jamie Dimon: I obviously hear all that stuff. Different people vote for ... And this I know just from talking to a lot of people, we shouldn't ascribe to an individual about why they're voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. They're doing it for different reasons than a very simple thing. Some do it because they think the growth is better, regulations are better, or America first. They all different reasons. I think people should learn to listen more, take a deep breath, try to think as a citizen and think about what's good for the long-term health of the country. And that's what I hope people do.
Emma Tucker: So you listen, you go on your tours around rural America. What do you hear when you go out and about in the U.S.?
Jamie Dimon: Yeah. People are worried. Like you pointed out, the economy's pretty good, but they're still worried. And like I said, there are legitimate reasons that there are groups of people who are angry. Now, it doesn't mean their policies are right, doesn't mean they're exactly right. But I think we should listen to them more. Now why are inner-city schools failing? Why have incomes didn't go up for 20 years? America grew at, I think, a little less than 2% for 20 years. I think that's anemic. I think we should (inaudible) why is that? And why can't we do a better job for our veterans and veterans fans? Why can't we do a better job for kids that wherever you graduate, if you graduate high school, even if you don't graduate, that you have skills to get you a job making $50,000 or more. They're all there. It all can be done. They can all be fixed. And there's frustration.
Emma Tucker: Just to bring it back to what's going on now, the current news cycle with these very polarizing issues in America. Do you think that's the sort of thing that chief execs like you should comment on publicly or make statements as a company on?
Jamie Dimon: The answer is yes if it's appropriate and you know how to do it. So in my letter, it's quite clear I'm a full-throated red-blooded, patriotic, free enterprise capitalist. And I'm unabashed and unashamed. I also acknowledge that we've left part of society behind. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging it and trying to do something about it. So we'll support the LGBT community. We'll support free, fair, safe voting. But when it comes to defending our people, absolutely we're going to do it.
Emma Tucker: So you're often asked, "When are you going to retire?" And your answer is often, "In five years."
Jamie Dimon: Yeah.
Emma Tucker: So is 2029 the year?
Jamie Dimon: No, I stopped saying that. So first of all, it's totally up to the board. We've got wonderful people. We've always said, I am one of the few people who has a president in place who could take over tomorrow. Not many people could say that. And if you spoke to the people who know the company, they would say there are four or five people they would be very comfortable with running the company. They're being moved around at different jobs. They're very good. They're very happy. I'm very happy. The board will decide. I would tell you when I can no longer give my best and my all, I shouldn't do it. I should move on at that point. But I still have the energy and the capability, and I still think I'm aging well in terms of you do gain wisdom as you get older. And hopefully you can provide value to the company and my country through this birch.
Emma Tucker: Good. Well, Jamie Dimon, thank you very much indeed for this interview.
Jamie Dimon: Emma, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
Kate Linebaugh: That's all for today, Friday, April 26th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The show's made by Annie Baxter, Katherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphreys, Ryan Knutson, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Pérez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinoza, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singgih, Laiying Tang, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whelan, Tatiana Zamis, and me Kate Linebaugh. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singhapok, and Peter Leonard with help this week from Sam Bair. Our theme music is by So Wylie. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singhapok, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.