JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Donald Trump have reportedly met privately twice in the past two months to discuss the economy, an apparent thawing of relations after years of occasional tensions between the two.
Most recently, Dimon was at the White House last week to discuss the economy, affordable housing, and the Trump administration’s trade policies, according to The Wall Street Journal.
At the meeting, which was attended by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Dimon reportedly congratulated the administration on reaching a trade deal with Japan, per the Journal.
During the meetings, the first of which occurred in June, Dimon also reportedly defended Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the importance of a politically insulated central bank, CNN reports, pushing back against Trump’s repeated criticisms of the Fed for not cutting interest rates, a stance the central bank maintained this week.
The appeals on that subject only seem to go so far, as Trump has continued to hammer Powell, whom he appointed, for not cutting interest rates. This week, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors elected to hold rates steady, though two Trump appointees voted to bring down the benchmarks, a rare break in the central bank’s usual record of unanimity.
“He is TOO LATE, and actually, TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed Chair,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday of Powell. “He is costing our Country TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS.”
The Independent has contacted the White House and JPMorgan for comment.
“We reach out to the administration all the time,” Dimon told CNBC on Thursday of his contacts with the White House. “They reach out all the time. I think it’s a good thing.”
The meetings represent the latest evolution in a complicated relationship between Trump and Dimon.
Despite skepticism among some economists of Trump’s claims regarding his sweeping tariff agenda, Dimon has offered mixed praise for the idea of new levies, though he has warned of a loss in U.S. credibility if the president keeps delaying tariff threats or is unable to reach new deals.
“The tariff stuff … was very big and very large and everybody all at once,” Dimon said in May. “I think it’s very important that they start to show progress in the deal.”
That month, Dimon also said the administration’s One Big, Beautiful Bill spending package had the potential to “stabilize things” concerning the economy.
“These are deals in principle … a real trade deal would be 10 or 20,000 pages long,” he added. “But any progress is good.”
Elsewhere, Dimon has warned about the diplomatic effect of tariffing U.S. allies.
“If the Western world’s military and economic alliances were to fragment, America itself would inevitably weaken over time,” Dimon he wrote in his annual letter in April.
Still, the two have clashed at other times in recent years.
Trump blasted Dimon as a “highly overrated globalist” in 2023, after the executive urged the public to support Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary over Trump. That year, Dimon also said the debt ceiling was “one more thing [Trump] doesn’t know much about.”
During the first Trump administration, Dimon was part of a business advisory council that fell apart in the aftermath of the president’s ambivalent response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
“There is no room for equivocation here: the evil on display by these perpetrators of hate should be condemned and has no place in a country that draws strength from our diversity and humanity,” Dimon said at the time.
