Jamie Dimon, the billionaire chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, says he could beat President Trump in an election campaign – but not liberal Democrats.
“I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is,” Dimon said Wednesday in remarks reported by CNBC at an event to discuss the largest U.S. lender’s $500 million initiative to finance critical urban projects. “I can’t beat the liberal side of the Democratic Party.”
Dimon, who has swatted away speculation that he would run for president and, in the past, that he might become Trump’s treasury secretary, apologized shortly afterward.
“I should not have said it,” he said in a statement. “I’m not running for president. Proves I wouldn’t make a good politician. I get frustrated because I want all sides to come together to help solve big problems.” Dimon has previously praised the White House’s advances in deregulation as well as the passage of last year’s GOP-led tax cuts and the creation of a territorial system while criticizing its protectionist trade policies.
[Jamie Dimon: America’s problems don’t have a political party]
The best way to address trade issues is to “think through it strategically with allies and make sure we’re doing the right thing and not doing these one-off things, which tend to backfire,” Dimon, who chairs the Business Roundtable, said in March as the debate over tariffs heated up. Trump has imposed levies this year on steel, aluminum and $50 billion of Chinese imports, while threatening to add duties on automobiles and increase the amount of taxed Chinese shipments 10-fold.
Dimon, who was paid a total $28.3 million last year at JPMorgan, where he has been CEO since 2005, also said he had earned his fortune on his own rather than inheriting it, a reference to the real estate company founded by Trump’s father.
“This wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money,” Dimon added, according to the CNBC report, which generated immediate responses on Twitter. “It wasn’t a gift from Daddy.”
The president, an avid Twitter user who has described himself as unbeatable in the 2020 presidential campaign, didn’t immediately weigh in.
JPMorgan slipped 0.4 percent to $113.98 in New York trading on Wednesday. The shares have surged 6.6 percent so far this year.
