Jamie Dimon on how economic inequality fueled political polarization and what can be done

From trade to diversity to immigration, many U.S. corporations are navigating a divisive political climate on a range of issues that impact their businesses. The CEO of the nation’s largest bank, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, has been speaking out about some of these. Judy Woodruff spoke with him in Bentonville, Arkansas, for her series, America at a Crossroads.

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Amna Nawaz: Many U.S. corporations are navigating a divisive political climate on a range of issues that impact their businesses, from trade to diversity to immigration.

Geoff Bennett: The CEO of the country’s largest bank, Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase, has been speaking out about it.

Judy Woodruff spoke with him in Bentonville, Arkansas, for her series America at a Crossroads.

Judy Woodruff: Every summer for the past 14 years, Jamie Dimon has spent a week traveling through different parts of the country on his annual bus tour…

(Cheering)

(Applause)

Judy Woodruff: … visiting bank branches like this one opened just last year in Bentonville, Arkansas, meeting with employees and clients and asking and answering questions.

Dimon is one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street at the helm of J.P. Morgan Chase for the past 20 years. And every year, he writes a letter to shareholders outlining his top concerns, including on issues beyond his immediate role as a banker, things like education, DEI, and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

With former President Trump charging the U.S. economy is shattered, Dimon’s view is striking.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman, J.P. Morgan Chase: It is the most prosperous, most innovative, best economy the world has ever seen. This world of ours lifted billions of people out of poverty. There are negatives. We should focus on that.

But to give you some — a couple of focal points, European GDP per person was very close to ours something like 20 years ago. It’s now like 65 percent of ours. So, when you compare us to the rest of the Western world, quite good. And we need to continue to do that. And I think we could continue to do that.

Judy Woodruff: You wrote in your letter to shareholders in the spring about our, you called it, polarized electorate.

And you said we need to find ways to put aside our differences. Why do we find ourselves in this situation?

Jamie Dimon: I will give you my theory and a bunch of things that caused it.

We had this financial crisis that hurt a lot of people, discredited a lot of Wall Street, and that, I think was part of it. If you look at the income levels in America, we had very slow growth for 20 years. And then if you look at the bottom 20 percent, they didn’t have a pay increase for 20 or 30 years, OK? So, and those are people making less than $20 an hour.

They also have worse health, less insurance. They’re dying 10 years younger, but their schools are failing in a lot of cases, rural schools or inner-city high schools, not all of them. But a lot of them, 50 percent of the kids don’t graduate. So the equal opportunity wasn’t there. Income isn’t there. Hope isn’t there. Health wasn’t there.

All of us should look at that and say, what should we do to lift up society? Then I also think there’s that, and then there’s also this constant degrading of fellow Americans because of what they believe. They don’t believe what you believe, they’re bad people, they’re immoral people.

I think we should stop insulting each other.

Judy Woodruff: Dimon recently wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post aimed at the next American president, stressing the need for national unity and equal opportunity for all, warning that the American dream is disappearing for many because opportunity is not shared equally.

And so what’s the solution?

Jamie Dimon: I will give you a bunch right here.

Earned Income Tax Credit, OK? Right now, if you’re a single mother with two children making $14,000 a year, the government gives you $6,000. A lot of people don’t avail themselves of this because they may not know about it. I would get rid of the child requirement. I would make the benefit $10,000, so that anyone working would make $24,000.

That money would go to the families. It would go into their communities. It would be spent the way they think it should be spent without government interference. I think it’d be exceptional. And jobs create dignity. So you incent jobs, jobs create dignity, jobs create better outcomes for families, less crime, less drugs, and you would incent people back in the work force.

If I was the federal government, I would tell every high school — I’d start in the high schools and community colleges — that we want to measure you on the outcomes. How many kids get jobs making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000? And that would incent them to, locally, what do we need to get jobs, coding, automotive, aviation, program management, financial management, compliance?

It is doable, because I can point out tons of schools and tons of communities that actually do something like that.

Judy Woodruff: We talked about income disparities, how people in the top 1 percent of income brackets earn over 100 times more than those in the bottom 20 percent.

Some people are going to listen to what you’re saying and have the view that the big financial powerhouses in this country have played a role in continuing and exacerbating our divide.

What role has the private sector played and the financial sector played in creating this inequality that we live in right now?

Jamie Dimon: I think there — obviously, there are good companies and bad companies and good politicians and bad politicians.

And are there examples where they are the ones who made it worse in some cases? Sure. Have they abused their position or regulated — sure. Has something taken place? But most of the banks I know have special programs for minority mortgages, vets. We have programs to hire disabled.

And all these things work. So a lot of companies, they try to do their part. They can’t do the part that government needs to do. We can help. And when you get — there are examples where I call up CEOs and I tell them they should be embarrassed about what they did. So there is truth that they aren’t always perfect.

I think a lot of companies, when they go to Washington, D.C., they should worry more about what’s good for the country than what’s good for their company. That’s true for a lot of special interest groups.

But I have to be very clear. It’s not enough, if the federal government doesn’t do its part, because you’re really push — sometimes, you’re pushing the rock uphill.

Judy Woodruff: And how do you get the federal government to do that…

Jamie Dimon: You got to…

(Crosstalk)

Judy Woodruff: … When the two parties are at each other’s throats on so many issues right now?

Jamie Dimon: Yes, but they came together for the infrastructure bill. They come together for certain things.

And that is work. I mean, that is hard work, but I tell people don’t get frustrated. Just do it. There are a lot of parts of my job I don’t like either, but I have to do them.

Judy Woodruff: You — in your column, you also — you talked about reducing the debt. You talked about encouraging investment, which you just referred to, lowering inequality, strengthening the military.

How do you do all that and bring the debt down?

Jamie Dimon: I think it’s doable. I would spend the money that helped make it a better country.

So, some of it is infrastructure, Earned Income Tax Credits, military. I would have a competitive international tax system. And then there might — and then I would maximize growth. And, remember, growth isn’t just about all that. It’s also about faster permitting.

And then you will have a little bit of deficit. And you would maybe just raise taxes a little bit, like the Warren Buffett type of rule. I would do that. And we would be fine.

Judy Woodruff: The Buffett rule states that no household earning over $1 million should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families.

We are in the middle of a presidential campaign. Do you think, because of that, things could get worse, or could they get better? What do you think?

Jamie Dimon: Well, I’m hoping not.

I — look, I don’t know. And I hope both presidential candidates realize that jazzing up and making the American people angry is not a good thing to do.

Judy Woodruff: And yet that language persists on the campaign trail.

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Vice Presidential Candidate: You know it. You feel it. These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell. That’s what you see.

(Cheering)

(Applause)

Gov. Tim Walz: That’s what you see.

Judy Woodruff: But much of the vitriol is coming from Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: So now we have a new victim to defeat, lyin’ Kamala Harris, lyin’, L-Y-I-N apostrophe.

(Booing)

Judy Woodruff: Do you think it’s time for people like you to say to him and to others, let’s stop this?

Jamie Dimon: I don’t like any of that stuff. I’m not going to talk about particular people. I personally don’t like it. And I don’t think it works.

And I think when you — even use the term MAGA, you’re insulting 74 million voters. But they have different views and different opinions. But if you look, just take a step back. Be honest. He’s kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration.

Judy Woodruff: Early this year, in an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Dimon says he was trying to make that point when he lauded some of Trump’s policies on immigration, China and NATO.

Jamie Dimon: And that’s why they’re voting for him.

Judy Woodruff: Some took that as a signal of support for Trump, but Dimon says it was a warning to Democrats.

Jamie Dimon: I think this — this negative talk about MAGA is going to hurt Biden’s election campaign.

I blame myself. I didn’t say it artfully. But I was making the same point that I made in my op-ed, that 74 million people voted Republican and they voted because they thought that there was partial truth that immigration was a problem, which I agree with, that China was a problem, which I agree with, that NATO was a problem.

Not leaving NATO. I don’t want to leave NATO. I’m a strong supporter of NATO and our military allies. But I said he’s right about — partially about NATO. I should have said partially about the funding of NATO. I was only making a point that people are voting for different reasons, and that we — they should stop insulting MAGA.

Judy Woodruff: In his April letter to shareholders, Dimon called for strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, even as many DEI policies are on the chopping block in more than 30 states and as other corporations pull back.

I mean, you’re saying all this at a time when we’re hearing a lot of ugly language about DEI, people — that’s a — that’s become a pejorative term.

Jamie Dimon: I don’t think most people are against when you say diversity, reaching out to different communities and doing a better job. And the word equity means equal opportunity.

If you mean the word equity means equal outcomes, I’m against that too. That simply won’t work. And so I understand the pushback. When it comes to all of these things, J.P. Morgan, we know we want to do. We do it our way. We think about it. We’re human beings. We take care of our people. We take care of our communities.

We’re going to try to help lift up parts of society. And most of that’s for profit, just like a lot of the companies, they also sell goods and services to low-income people too.

Judy Woodruff: As for the major party presidential nominees, Dimon knows them both. In 2012, he engaged in tense negotiations with then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris over a multibillion-dollar settlement related to homeowners hurt by predatory lenders, including J.P. Morgan Chase.

More recently, former President Trump suggested Dimon could serve as his Treasury secretary in his next administration, but then quickly dispelled that idea.

Whomever wins in November, Dimon says he’s hopeful the country will find a way forward.

Given all this, I mean, given this polarized atmosphere, can the United States move ahead on the great challenges facing this country in this next administration?

Jamie Dimon: I believe it will and that some — it may — it will be a president or a leader or someone else who just — kind of just bends that curve a little bit, and does it respectfully.

Remember, Abe Lincoln — I think it was one of those famous quotes where Abe Lincoln said — someone said: “Mr. Lincoln, God’s on our side.”

And he said: “No, son, let’s hope we’re on God’s side.”

There was a little humility within Abe Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents. And so things come along where people change. And it might be the leader — it might be a leader himself who changes. They realize that they’re going the wrong direction, and they have to go in a different direction.

And so let’s all hope. I’m an optimist by nature. And I think, when Warren Buffett talks about the great resiliency of America, I believe that. Something will change it somewhere. And, sometimes, you have to go through difficult times to do it.

Judy Woodruff: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Judy Woodruff in Bentonville, Arkansas.