** 1/23/26 - Dimon Now Has a $5 Billion Reason to Stand Up to Trump..........
Buzz Sawyer
"Europe has few tools at its disposal to exercise direct sway over Trump, but
the continent may have finally abandoned the notion that it could use gentle
courting and bargaining to avoid becoming a punching bag.
The US business community may be on the verge of learning a similar lesson."
Dimon Now Has a $5 Billion Reason to Stand Up to Trump
Lesson in courage.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
olloTakeaways by Bloomberg AI
President Donald Trump, confronted with European pushback and a mini-meltdown in financial markets, abandoned plans this week to launch a Greenland takeover and suffocate allies who didn’t support him with hefty tariffs. Europe has few tools at its disposal to exercise direct sway over Trump, but the continent may have finally abandoned the notion that it could use gentle courting and bargaining to avoid becoming a punching bag.
The US business community may be on the verge of learning a similar lesson.
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Trump sued one of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and its chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, on Thursday. He contended that he and his companies were illegally and unfairly barred from doing business with the bank for “woke” political reasons a few months after he left the White House in 2021.
Trump also left office that year after helping incite a riot at the US Capitol meant to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost. A former special counsel who investigated the insurrection, Jack Smith, testified to Congress on Thursday that his team “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity” — and that Trump knew his claims that the election was stolen from him were false. Trump’s reelection as president in 2024 ended Smith’s probe.
JPMorgan hasn’t stated exact reasons for closing Trump’s accounts in 2021, but perhaps the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a factor. Banks operate under the supervision of a sprawling web of federal and state regulations, and consorting with clients suspected of or known to have broken the law is a no-no in most instances. In a press release about Trump’s lawsuit, JPMorgan cited “rules and regulatory expectations” as a reason it typically closes accounts.
“While we regret President Trump has sued us, we believe the suit has no merit. We respect the President’s right to sue us and our right to defend ourselves — that’s what courts are for,” the bank also said. “Our company does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.”
Trump sued another financial institution, Capital One Financial Corp., for similar reasons last year, so a trend might be afoot. Personal animus may be at work here, too. Just a day before the lawsuit was filed, Dimon criticized Trump’s plans to cap credit-card interest rates as an “economic disaster” during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Dimon also said he would have approached negotiations with Europe in a “more polite” fashion than the president. After praising Trump for enforcing tighter immigration standards at the US’ southern border, Dimon also ripped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s recent thuggery in Minneapolis, where an agent killed a US citizen, Renee Good. Videos of other violent encounters there have gone viral. “I don’t like what I’m seeing with five grown men beating up little women,” Dimon said.
Trump and Dimon have traded barbs in the past. “I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is,” Dimon said of Trump at an event in 2018. “He could punch me all he wants, it wouldn’t work with me. I’d fight right back.” Dimon also noted that “this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money. It wasn't a gift from daddy." Trump took to social media to respond, observing that Dimon could never cut it as president because “he doesn’t have the aptitude or ‘smarts’ & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess - otherwise he is wonderful.”
Trump is notably thin-skinned and has an imperial attachment to the presidency. He expects supplicants to bend the knee (hence the clown-car rounds of canned praise he engineers from subordinates at his cabinet meetings). So Dimon — clearheaded, truthful, admirable and steely in his Davos comments — probably struck a nerve. That likelihood is buttressed by the fact that Trump then sued him and his bank for a whopping $5 billion. (I feel their pain; Trump unsuccessfully sued me for $5 billion in 2006.)
Other business leaders should take a cue from Dimon and start standing up for themselves more forcefully and openly. They all get paid quite well for being leaders, after all, and we are living in an era when public courage is essential. Trump’s second term has been a revenge tour as much as anything else. When he disrupts or threatens corporate operations with unhinged policies and proclamations — or lawsuits — rooted in personal grievances, bravado or political expediency, CEOs would do well to push back. Trump’s trampling of core American values — including the rule of law and respect for our global alliances — should inspire them as well.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s bravura speech in Davos recommending new alliances in the Trump age might also put some philosophical and strategic protein in corporate honchos’ diets. Of late, though, it appears that US businesses would rather maneuver in the shadows, as Bloomberg News and my Bloomberg Opinion colleague, Beth Kowitt, have highlighted.
Trump’s suit against JPMorgan and Dimon has a number of interesting anomalies clinging to it. The president oversees the federal regulatory architecture that governs and polices banks, so he’s hardly an average citizen bringing a personal claim to court. He can crack the regulatory whip alongside his lawsuit if he chooses. Ethical, financial and legal conflicts of interest abound. And if the president hadn’t gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau he might have filed his claim against JPMorgan through that agency just like common folks used to do.
While Trump’s lawsuit notes that he and his family “have always complied with all applicable banking rules and regulations” Trump was a serial bankruptcy artist throughout his career, and he and his businesses defaulted on billions of dollars of loans. How he handled his dealings with banks and others later drew the attention of the law enforcement community.
Trump may have been encouraged to file his lawsuits against JPMorgan and Capital One by British political curiosity Nigel Farage’s court action against a UK bank after it closed one of his accounts. Farage and the bank, NatWest Group Plc, settled last year after the bank acknowledged “serious failings” in its dealings with him. JPMorgan doesn’t appear to be ready to admit to any such thing, so Trump will have to contend with robust and expensive legal fisticuffs. Among the bank’s arguments may be that Trump said in the past that it was former President Joe Biden, and not bank executives, who caused his accounts to be closed.
The Florida lawyer representing Trump, Alejandro Brito, has also filed suits against Dow Jones & Co., News Corp., the New York Times Co., and the British Broadcasting Corp. seeking combined damages of $35 billion for allegedly defaming his client. The media companies have denied wrongdoing and said they are ready to go to court. Still, Trump has turned flimsy or ludicrous suits into a lucrative cottage industry that has supplemented his presidential salary.
Trump has also supplemented his income, and added billions to his net worth, by hanging a for-sale sign on the Oval Office. He has harvested more money from questionable crypto deals in one year in office than he often made in decades as a real estate developer.
In that context, Trump might owe JPMorgan a debt of gratitude. His eldest son said last year that the family’s inability to access bank accounts convinced them to get into the crypto trade.