JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s Interview @WEF 2026 (Transcript)

So, yeah, I think you have to look at all of that and if you put your head in the sand, you will lose. I think that was true 30 years ago, but I think it’s probably more true today.

And the brain power and money that’s going to this thing is extraordinary. And so, if we don’t do our job faster, quicker, yeah, we’ll lose soon.

AI’s Impact on the Labor Market

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: And when you take the experience you’ve had at JPMorgan, what does it make you think about the impact across the economy? Are you in the camp that say someone like Dario Amodei is, you know, half of all entry level white collar jobs will be gone in one to five years. Do you think it is going to be a kind of cataclysmic impact on the labor market?

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah, I don’t know about that. So here as a business party, my view is don’t put your head in the sand. It is what it is. We’re going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably. It is what it is.

And you can hope for the world you want, but you’re going to get the world you got and your competitors are going to use it, countries are going to use it. However, I do think it may go too fast for society. And if it goes too fast for society, that’s where government and business in a collaborative way step in together and come up with a way to retrain people or move it over time.

So you go back, trade adjustment assistance was supposed to do that. If a town loses a factory and they lose jobs, you have income assistance, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that. And I think we’re doing it already ourselves.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: That wasn’t exactly a great success in the US case. It was incredibly poorly done.

JAMIE DIMON: It did not work. We need to be prepared to have something that works this time.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: But given the speed at which this is happening, and this is, I’m not much talking about JPMorgan, I’m talking in public policy terms. Given the speed at which this technology is coming, what does the US government, what do other governments need to be doing right now to prepare societies for that?

JAMIE DIMON: Have a plan to retrain people, relocate people, income assist people. I’ll give you a thought exercise, okay? Two million commercial trucks in the United States. It may get to the point where you can push a button, you’re going to save lives, it’s going to be faster, you’re going to save CO2. It obviously makes sense.

And should you do it all at once? If 2 million people go from driving a truck making $150,000 a year to a next job might be $25,000. No, you have civil unrest. So therefore phase it in. Retrain a lot of, just tell them you can’t lay off 2 million truckers tomorrow. You can phase it in over time.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: You want the government to tell you you can’t lay off a whole bunch of people at JPMorgan?

JAMIE DIMON: And we would agree. If we have to do that to save society, remember, it’ll be more productive society, so society will have more production, we’re going to cure a lot of cancers. You’re not going to slow it down. How do you have plans in place to make it work better if in fact it does something terrible and that’s the only way to do it?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: And that should be done at the level of the government telling companies they cannot lay off?

JAMIE DIMON: No, I think it should be done at more of a local level where someone says to a JPMorgan, can you put, we give you incentives to put in place to retrain these people. Can you slow this down and give people income assistance? Give them, yeah, we could do stuff like that. We’re not going to kill all of our employees tomorrow because we’re just not like that.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Will, in five years time, will JPMorgan have fewer employees than it has now?

JAMIE DIMON: Well, if we’re good, we’ll have, you know, we’re growing still around the world, but my guess is it’ll be fewer employees.

The Geopolitical Landscape

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Yeah, in five years. So, AI, the technological revolution is one of the huge changes we’re living through. We’re also living through a very dramatic geopolitical shift. The word Greenland keeps coming up here. Before we get to Greenland itself, more broadly, you’ve written in shareholder letters over the years about the importance of geopolitics. You’ve worried about geopolitics in previous years. How dangerous is this particular geopolitical moment? Is it the most dangerous you’ve seen?

JAMIE DIMON: Look, I think it’s cumulative. I mean, I think the world at the invasion of Ukraine by 300,000 Russian troops, eyes, wake up. We thought the world was safe. It’s simply not safe.

And so, my view is what I want. And I think you show it about what is you actually want. You’re a king or a queen for a day. I want a strong, I think we need a stronger NATO. I think it’s right for us to complain that NATO didn’t do enough. Fine, got it. Crying over spilled milk. How do you make it stronger?

And I think we need a stronger Europe. I think that’s good for America. It’s good for Europe. They know what they need to do. The Draghi report and all these common markets and savings and investment policies, and they don’t have that common market yet. They have too much bureaucracy. They have too much things that get in the way.

But that would be good for Europe and very good for America. And trade and tariffs are part of that, but not the only part of that. So I still think that’s the best thing to keep the Western world together. That would be my goal. Keep the main, make the world safer and stronger for democracy so that we don’t read that book 40 years from now, “How the West Lost.”

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Do you think the Trump administration is making the world safer and stronger and making NATO stronger?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t think it’s a binary thing. I think that they, I think to isolate what NATO weaknesses are, I think that’s fine. They do it in their own way. I wouldn’t say things like that on TV. I might say it publicly, privately.

So I think that’s, I think it’s okay to point out, I would be more polite about it, about the weaknesses of Europe, what they need to do. But if the goal is to make them stronger as opposed to fragment Europe, then I think that’s okay.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Do you think that is the goal?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t know. I have not heard them say what they want the ultimate goal to be.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: But, you know, the only one…

JAMIE DIMON: But remember, we did not leave NATO. And so, to me, it’s important to understand that originally, during Trump won, people, “Oh, we’re looking to leave.” No, we didn’t. And he’s out there in the world, and you may not agree with it all, but it’s not a retreat in America of some sort.

And the economic, I think the economic side is more complicated because it entails really detailed policy that needs to get done. And I would kind of, if I was there, I would kind of be using our moral persuasion, our economic persuasion, our intelligence and military to kind of push Europe to do the things that’s right for Europe.

And the leadership of Europe has to do it. It really can’t be done by America, but we can be a partner, maybe.

Geopolitics and Foreign Policy

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Furthering that, we’ll come to the economics in a second. But just one more on the geopolitics, because you’re right that it’s hard to characterize what the Trump doctrine is, if you will. It’s not America first, it’s not America alone. It might be America unconstrained, but it has elements that we can now tell it is a transactional foreign policy. It is a foreign policy that places much less weight, actually, on alliances. It’s a bullying foreign policy overall. Is that a foreign policy that is good for America?

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah, I’m not going to comment on all that because when you deal with the press, they want—you guys always want binary answers to everything.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: I honestly think that’s a reasonable question. Is it a good thing for America to have this kind of policy?

JAMIE DIMON: Let me correct you a little bit, okay? When I talk to the press, you know, they never asked me to comment. Everything Biden did, and I think he did some terrible things both domestically and in foreign policy. Do I agree with everything that Trump administration? Of course not, no.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: But in aggregate, in aggregate, is this a good foreign policy?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t know yet. If they were here, if I were talking to the president, I’d be saying exactly what I’m saying. This should be the goal. Here are the ways to get it. These things may be counter to that.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: So there’s an argument that China is actually the big winner from this approach because China has stood up to the United States on tariffs and faced down the United States. China is now projecting itself as a stable supporter of multilateralism. Do you think China is the winner from this?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that’s a real stretch. You know, China has a $15,000 per person GDP. Ours is $85,000. We’re the most dynamic economy and prosperous the world’s ever seen. We have 40 military alliances, 140 economic alliances. They have one.

They’ve done a great job in so many things, but they still import 10 million barrels of oil a day. Yeah, this has created some openings for them. You know, are they going to be the best economic or military alliance for a lot of the people out there who are mad at America? Probably not.

So, you know, I take a deep breath in that one and it’s easy to say, I think they’ve done things right. They have serious problems, you know, in their economy. They’ve got, you know, kind of two economies, the consumer, real estate, misallocation of capital, huge investment in technology. And I applaud them, let them, you know, cars and batteries and stuff like that. But whether that works over a long period of time, I do not know.

They on their own without us. Okay. And you guys always forget to mention this. Korea, North Japan, Australia, Philippines, they’re all rearming on their own. That’s China’s actions caused that, not America’s actions. We’re part of that. I remember between Rahm Emanuel and his ambassador how they’re working with, they’ve got Korea and Japan working together. They’re going to rearm, which I think they have to at this point.

And so yeah, this is a lot of things taking place here, not just one. And so I try to keep open minded about all those things and give as best advice as I can to my country or other people.

The Post-War Order

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: There are a lot of things happening at the same time. But I’m just trying to get a sense from you about the scale of the moment. Do you think this is—Prime Minister Carney has called it a rupture. Do you think this is we are shifting? Is this post-war order that we all talked about, including you, I think in previous shareholder letters, is that over? Are we in a new world now?

JAMIE DIMON: Again, you’re making it binary. I don’t know. I saw part of Carney’s speech. I have a lot of respect for Carney. He did. You know, we’re causing some things may not be good in the long run for America. Like Carney was just in China and now he’s going to go to India and all these things like that. It’s not a rupture. If you said to me America become unreliable. No, it’s just, it’s just you had total reliance and now it’s less reliable. You know, it’s probably more.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Which is now, now we’re talking. This is my profession, not yours. I mean, less reliable. At some point you become unreliable.

JAMIE DIMON: But we’re still, still a military ally to all 40 countries. When I talk to our military, they’re geared up to defend their allies around the world. You know, Trump hasn’t stopped all that. So I just, you know, I think it’s time for people to take a little bit of a deep breath.

That does not mean I like it all, you know. And you know, of course all my Democratic friends send me notes. You got to say this, you got to say that, you got to say this. And my point is, well, no, they never go through any detail whatsoever. They just huff and puff and get angry and that doesn’t work. So, you know, I know what I believe in. I’m going to write some more about it in my chairman’s letter about policies I think that work or don’t work. And that’s what I’m going to do.

Trade and Tariffs

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: So let’s talk about economic policy where there’s also been a pretty big change. Two big areas. We’ve gone from a US that underwrote multilateral trade rules to a US that believes in tariffs. Now the tariffs that have ended up being imposed are 10%, probably on average not quite as high as we feared on Liberation Day. Is that a good idea?

JAMIE DIMON: Again, it’s not binary. There are three—no, but there, no, but you guys, you know, you got to get your heads out of like your own echo chamber. There are three parts to trade, okay. And some require tariffs. Okay.

One part is national security. We should do what we have to do to create national security around rare earths, you know, around active pharmaceutical ingredients and some that may require policy that is not typical, like tariffs or long-term dated contracts so you can build the stuff here you need and some advanced manufacturing category. These companies cannot succeed if there aren’t barriers, quotas, tariffs, or pay for play. Absolutely. I would do what I had to do to protect American interests.

The second one is unfair trade. And there’s, I say unfair, important trade. I just don’t think furniture or T-shirts are important trade. But, you know, there is unfair trade. It’s not in some places blown out of proportion, but, you know, if you are subsidizing China in this case, or anyone, you know, subsidizing their cars, their batteries, this, that. So anyone who tries to compete is going to get sunk because of subsidies. You know, and the subsidies can come in various forms.

Then you should counter that. You can counter that with quotas. A lot of countries have quotas. You can counter that with tariffs. Perfectly fine, as long as there’s a reason for it. So, but I’m not a tariff guy in general. I don’t think in general it’s a great idea, but, you know, it is what it is.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: But the president is a tariff guy in general.

JAMIE DIMON: He is.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: He loves tariffs.

JAMIE DIMON: He is.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: So this is an area where you would disagree.

JAMIE DIMON: I would.

Immigration Policy

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Okay, good. Immigration, another big change in immigration policy. We’ve essentially gone from a huge amount of unconstrained immigration, which clearly the President ran on countering and has done, but to a United States that is, you know, much, much more skeptical of immigration, both, you know, legal and illegal. Is that good?

JAMIE DIMON: So I’m still angry at the Biden administration for what they allowed to happen. Okay. And I think it severely damaged our country. And then, and they say, “Oh, there’s nothing you can do about it.” And Trump comes in, boom, it’s closed. God bless them. You know, countries have to control their borders or they will cause huge problems. And you have that all over Europe. And it’s even worse there because in America, most people coming to America want to be American. They come to work, they can’t wait to become a citizen of the United States of America. That’s not true for most of the European immigration.

I was with President Trump when Trump won and I said to him, “When you get the borders controlled, fix the rest of it. DACA stay.” He said, “Yeah, more merit based.” He said, “Absolutely. A path to citizenship for hard working people. Absolutely.” You know, and, you know, proper asylum. I would urge him to do that. I think he can because he controlled the borders and stuff like that.

So, yeah, I don’t see much evidence of that. Not yet. A little bit in the merit side, you see them talking about in the merit side and places. And of course, I don’t like what I’m seeing, you know, with, you know, five grown men beating up little women. Okay. So I think we should calm down a little bit on the internal anger about immigration.

And, you know, for those people, I’ve heard Trump say, even this term, we need these people. They work in our hospitals and our hotels and restaurants and agriculture. And they’re good people because we all know them, they are good people. They should be treated that way.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: That’s not what you’re seeing on the streets.

JAMIE DIMON: You know what? I don’t. Yes. It’s not always what you see. And I think rounding up criminals is one thing. I don’t have a chart that shows—and this is, I’m a fanatic about detail. Show me who’s been rounded up. Are they here legally? Are they criminals? Did they do some law? Do they break American law? But I don’t like what I’m seeing. But it’s hard for me to tell whether that’s just, you know, what the liberal press plays or whether there’s more truth to that.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: You’re beginning to sound quite Trumpy in this, the liberal press.

JAMIE DIMON: I’m not Trumpy. I just, I’m a realist and I like facts and detail and not binary s* that goes on all the time. I think the Economist is the absolute best, most amicable thing in the world. And you should continue that.

Independent Institutions and the Fed

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Absolutely, we do. We are and we do. Let’s talk about one other area. Institutions, attacks on institutions and undermining of independent institutions. The Fed being the obvious one. There has been, and I don’t think I’m, you know, being, as you would say, too binary on this. There have very clearly been pressure on the Fed. Notably 10 days ago, the announcement by Chair Powell that he had received a subpoena for a criminal investigation. Is that a good idea?

JAMIE DIMON: Everyone I know, including President Trump says we should have an independent Fed is critical. I’ve never seen anyone, actually, I’m not completely independent. Just so you know, there’s two parts of the Fed. One is monetary that needs to be independent. The other is regulatory. Huge overreach. That’s not independent, that’s law. And let me finish.

I don’t like—I think the things that undercut independence are not good. So I think some of those words. I don’t like lawfare. I’ve had to deal with lawfare my whole life. I mean, going way back, you know, constantly being, you know, unfairly, sometimes fairly sometimes, but blown out of proportion. I think that undercuts it.

So I think, you know, Powell will be gone in five months. I think, you know, constant statements is a mistake. And just so you know, the Fed doesn’t really set interest rates. Okay, just listen closely to me. What happens if inflation goes up? They raise interest rates. What happens? Inflation goes down, they reduce interest rates. They are a fast follower.

And if you look at all Fed history, it isn’t like they’re completely independent. And the last time and by every American president wants lower rates. But the last time a President jawboned lower rates was Arthur Burns. You know, President Nixon, who had a 60% approval rating when he got elected. You know, inflation was only 3%. It kept on going up. Of course, there was Watergate and the oil crisis, but, you know, markets were down 40%. He resigns in disgrace.

Inflation with deficits half—and deficits are inflationary with deficits half what they are today. It went from 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%. And you can come up all the stronger unions, the oil issues and all that. But, but inflation is a bugaboo. And the Fed has to deal with inflation. And that’s a judgment of a lot of people, what that means.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: So, but just to be very clear, what we’re seeing now is lawfare and you’re against it.

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t like the courts doing stuff like that. I think they should be very thoughtful about when they pick something up like that.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: One of the other policies that the president announced recently, this has been going—

DOJ Overreach and Institutional Independence

JAMIE DIMON: On my whole life, too. So this isn’t just President Trump. So let’s be clear about DOJ overreach. It’s been consistent now for 20 years. And in the old days, the DOJ would step into something when it was referred to them by either civil or criminal. Now they just read the paper and step in, and that’s a mistake because to them, they’re a hammer. To them, everything’s a nail.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: One of President Trump’s recent proposals that would directly affect you, he’s doing it to improve affordability, is to impose a 10% cap on credit card rates. Is that a bad idea?

The Credit Card Rate Cap Proposal

JAMIE DIMON: It would be an economic disaster. And I’m not making this up, because our business, we would survive it, by the way. In the worst case, you’d have to have a drastic reduction of the credit card business. I mean drastic. I mean, like 80%. It would remove credit from 80% of Americans, and that is their backup credit.

But I have a great idea. Since there’s a huge disagreement on this one between Republicans and Democrats, I think we should test it. In my view, and I can’t do this because it’d be antitrust, but the government can do it. They should force all the banks to do it in two states, Vermont and Massachusetts, and see what happens.

And then I think the left will learn a real lesson. Everyone who thinks manipulating price will learn a real lesson. And the people crying the most won’t be the credit card companies. It’ll be the restaurants, the retailers, the travel companies, the schools, the municipalities, because people will miss their water payments, their this payment and that payment. It would be something else to watch. I think they should test it.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Well, President Trump may be determined to test it more broadly.

JAMIE DIMON: Well, then, okay, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. I think it’s wrong for the government to get involved extensively in pricing of stuff, but I got to deal with the world.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: It’s kind of interesting.

JAMIE DIMON: We’re going to give them at one point real analysis on the effects of this. We’ve given some, but not a lot.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: It’s kind of interesting when I ask you something that directly affects JPMorgan, you say it will be a complete economic disaster. When I speak more broadly about geopolitics, you’re very reluctant to criticize.

JAMIE DIMON: Well, those are different. I know exactly the economic impact. The other one is more qualitative: how it’s going to work, what are the pieces, what’s their intent, how are people going to respond? They’re not the same thing. But when you believe something is true, you should say that.

And so on the economic impact of the card thing, we’ll see. The other thing I’ve not seen anyone, really, Republicans, senators, businesses, banks, credit unions, community banks, anyone think it’s a good idea.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Do you think it is?

Affordability and Economic Policy

JAMIE DIMON: But it goes back to this thing about this word “affordability.” Of course we want affordability. The Democrats don’t own affordability. What we screwed up as a nation is bad policy around housing, mortgages, affordability, health, immigration. We’ve messed up so many policies which I write about. It’s time to fix them.

And I think the economy is going to help do that because you guys are really smart people. And we constantly have this economic policy that we don’t think through. We’ve driven half the companies out of the public markets. What are we doing? Why did that happen? And then we just can’t deal with reality anymore as a people because we want a simple answer to everything.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: And so when you tot up all the things that we’ve been talking about, the President’s policies, both geopolitically and economically, and the tech change that we’re living through, do you think the U.S. economy is, on balance, in better shape or worse shape?

The State of the U.S. Economy

JAMIE DIMON: It’s been hugely resilient. It’s in pretty good shape. You’re going to have a lot of stimulus early on this year. So you’re going to see it in multiple forms, from the one big beautiful bill to what to do with student lending, to some of the mortgage purchasing. They’re doing deregulation of banks, which is real deregulation, which feeds animal spirits.

Our economy is so large and so integrated, so complex, and it’s hard to always tell, but the innovation is unbelievable. You take a trip to Silicon Valley and look at these companies, it blows you away, the brain power going to fixing things and curing cancer and fixing machines. And so I think it’s great.

So when you talk about economic policy, I think what government should be focused more on is policy conducive to growth. And then of course you have policies that help the old, the sick, the aged, et cetera. And we don’t even do good in that in a lot of cases. So I think we could do a better job making the economy work for everybody.

And it is a little bit of this K economy now. We do see that where the upper income are doing far better. They got houses and stocks in there. The lower side, they’re back to normal, which is they don’t have enough of a rainy day fund. Jobs are getting a little harder to get, incomes have stopped growing a little bit, and we’re quite conscious of that.

And I think there are things we can do. Like for example, and we’ve done it now, so I would double the Earned Income Tax Credit. I would give people working more money as a negative tax. So you’re making $14,000, you get a check from the government of $12,000. I’d get rid of the child requirement. Then you’re giving it to the people who actually use it to further their lives, spend in their communities, take care of their kids, as opposed to government dictating how you spend money on every little thing you do. And so I think there are real fixes, but that makes society work better for everybody.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: And would you raise taxes to pay for that?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t think you have to. I think it would drive a lot of growth. I think I did the numbers at one point, be $60 billion of spending. I think it would probably create more than that of growth and taxes. And if you have to raise taxes a little bit, that’s fine.

But again, I don’t want to buy any argument. I don’t know anyone, okay, and you guys in the room, Democrats, Republicans, who think sending another trillion dollars to Washington D.C. will actually improve anything. So when you say raise taxes, if you said raise taxes and directly give it to the people who need it, I’d do it. But it doesn’t happen.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: We are running out of time.

The Washington Swamp

JAMIE DIMON: They close all these interest groups and they give it to their friends and all that, which is why the people consider it a swamp. It’s kind of a swamp. There’s 17,000 lobbying groups. Bank companies are guilty too. They’re just fighting for their one self-interest as opposed to what’s good for my country. But that’s what happens in Congress.

And you see how these bills get spent. Like the CHIPS Act was a good idea until it had to be a union place, childcare, diapers. What the hell are we doing? And we do it over and over and then it fails and then we spend more money. The problem is we didn’t spend enough money.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: So you’re a man with many strong opinions. We know that. In the last few minutes, a man not afraid to tell us about those opinions. But I was struck when we were talking about President Trump, you were very, very careful. And you are one of the more outspoken, let me finish, just let me finish. You are one of the more outspoken business leaders. I am struck, I’m genuinely struck by the unwillingness of CEOs in America to say anything critical. There is a climate of fear in your country. Would you agree with that and what should be done about it?

Climate of Fear and CEO Responsibility

JAMIE DIMON: This is the Davos intellectual elite. I’ve been coming to Davos all these years and listening to chatter and stuff like that. You didn’t do a particularly good job making the world a better place. I think it’s great we get together and talk, but the part that you want me to do is…

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: I want you to answer my question.

JAMIE DIMON: That gets rised up.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: No, I don’t. Jamie, that’s not true. I’m genuine. I’ve asked you this question.

JAMIE DIMON: I’ve made it clear. I want a stronger NATO, a stronger Europe. Some of the things Trump has done are causing that, some are not. I’m not a tariff guy, though I use it in the eight cases I had. I think they should change their approach to immigration. I’ve said it. What the hell else do you want me to say?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Is there a climate of fear?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that is completely clear. You know, hey, ready? You can, here’s your headline: I’m a globalist.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: I’m not looking for a headline. I’m trying to have a conversation. I’m not looking for a headline. But I enjoyed that. We’re running out of time. Thank you very much.

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