Good morning. Andrew here, in Davos, Switzerland. Today is the last day of this year’s World Economic Forum. It has been quite a week, and perhaps the most news-making forum in years. It may be summed up in one word: whiplash. The event started with worries about U.S. military action in Greenland and ended with a walk-back by President Trump and a surprise appearance by Elon Musk, who argued, “It is better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than a pessimist and right.” Underneath the headlines remains a longer-term problem: how to restore trust. It is clear to me that trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world is in peril. That concern was around in the first Trump administration, too. This time feels different. I moderated the closing session of this year’s forum during which Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank said this: “It takes time to build trust. It doesn’t take much time to erode it. Trust has been eroded — maybe a little bit, maybe a lot.” (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
The message behind the JPMorgan lawsuitViewed one way, President Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over allegations of “debanking” political conservatives is just another shot he’s taking at a company in court. (The list includes Disney, the BBC and The Times.) But the lawsuit — which also names Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s C.E.O., as a defendant — again puts corporate America off-balance and on edge. It also raises questions about the effectiveness of many corporate efforts to get on Trump’s good side. Trump is still determined to have a say on how private enterprise operates. Consider the role the administration took in every last detail of which companies it would favor to run TikTok in the U.S. (More on that below.) And during his speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Trump reminded listeners of the pressure he was putting on industries that have sought to win his favor: private equity (he’s targeting their investments in U.S. housing); military contractors (stock buybacks and executive compensation); and, yes, banks (a proposed cap on credit card rates). But debanking remains a personal issue for Trump, who claimed in the suit that JPMorgan had closed some of his and his family’s businesses’ accounts over “unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs” in an attempt to sideline him, politically and financially. “You’re not allowed to do what they did,” Trump told reporters yesterday. Remember, too, that Brian Moynihan, the Bank of America C.E.O. whom Trump criticized at Davos last year over debanking, was left off the invite list for a reception with the president at the forum, according to The Financial Times. And Trump’s family business has already sued Capital One over the issue. JPMorgan’s response sought to walk a fine line. A spokeswoman for the bank said that it believed the lawsuit had no merit, but she added, “We respect the president’s right to sue us and our right to defend ourselves — that’s what courts are for.” The spokeswoman also said that federal regulations required JPMorgan to close some accounts, though politics wasn’t a factor in any such moves, and that the lender supported the White House’s efforts to “prevent the weaponization of the banking sector.” It’s a reminder that striking a balance with Trump is extraordinarily difficult. Many in corporate America thought that Dimon had figured out how to win over the president better than most C.E.O.s, gingerly criticizing some policies while praising others. (That tact was on full display at Davos this week.) Then again, Trump is still pressing for the credit card rate cap, an idea that Dimon called an “economic disaster.” And now he’s taking on America’s most powerful banker — and, seemingly, trying to put other business leaders on notice.
TikTok seals a deal to avoid being banned in the U.S. ByteDance, the app’s Chinese owner, agreed to cede control of the U.S. operation to investors including Oracle; MGX, an Emirati investment firm; the private equity giant Silver Lake; and the tech billionaire Michael Dell. The arrangement appears to resolve the legal questions around the app’s future in the U.S., but experts say it does little to alleviate the national security concerns behind the ban efforts. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has reportedly lined up four banks to take it public. The rocket giant is said to have picked Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley for leading roles in a coming I.P.O., according to The Financial Times. The listing, which could come as soon as this year, is expected to raise a record amount of money — and big fees for its underwriters. Beijing reportedly clears tech companies’ purchases of Nvidia’s H200 chips. Shares in Nvidia are up in premarket trading today after Chinese regulators told businesses like Alibaba that they could prepare orders for the processors, which Washington has approved for export to China, according to Bloomberg. It’s a sign that Beijing is loosening restrictions on its domestic artificial intelligence industry, which has asked for access to American technology to compete against global rivals. Scar tissuePresident Trump’s latest unexpected battle, his lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its C.E.O., Jamie Dimon, landed like a bolt of lightning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Just when we thought we were in the clear!,” a top executive at a rival U.S. bank told Lauren Hirsch when the news broke yesterday. It was a reminder of how off-balance executives have been at Davos this year. Many bankers were breathing easier until the lawsuit was filed. Trump’s speech at the forum had few new attacks on their industry. And they felt that his goal of imposing a 10 percent interest rate cap on credit cards had a decent chance of dying on Capitol Hill. Executives debated the fallout from Trump’s attacks. One question that came up: Are Trump’s repeated attacks on trade partners and business leaders actually good negotiating tactics — or just leaving permanent scars? Take Europe and Canada. White House officials, as well as some American business leaders, hailed exceptional U.S. growth as a way to patch shaky global relations. But the speech by Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada lamenting “a rupture” in the rules-based international order instead became the talk of Davos. The risk of fraying U.S.-Canada-Europe relations is spooking executives, especially those leading multinational businesses. Will global investors exit the U.S.? In Denmark, where anger has been stirred by Trump’s demands for control of Greenland, pension funds have recently sold some American Treasury notes and bonds. Some at Davos wondered whether investors in U.S. private equity firms might reduce some of their exposure, too. The optimists’ view: With the S&P 500 near record territory, investors will largely stick with U.S. financial assets, regardless of Trump’s next moves against trade allies, against business leaders or against Fed policymakers. As Jacek Olczak, C.E.O. of Philip Morris International, put it to DealBook: “Where are you going to go?” Also seen and heard at Davos:
Snowmageddon!Winter is coming. A monster snowstorm is expected to blow across the country this weekend, from Texas to the Northeast. It could drop more than a foot of powder on a number of states — locking much of the country inside and freezing parts of the economy, Niko Gallogly reports. Ice and snow could paralyze the South, which lacks the infrastructure to handle extreme cold. Consider the 2021 storm that blasted through much of the South and Midwest, overloading electrical grids. A report from the City of Austin and Travis County estimated $195 billion in damage. Natural gas futures spiked more than 50 percent this week, with traders betting on a surge in demand and the possibility that “freeze-outs” cause disruptions in production. The travel industry is already pulling back. JetBlue, Delta and United are among the major airlines that have begun offering waivers or free cancellations for flights in affected areas this weekend. Meteorologists anticipate that thousands of flights could be canceled. Service and construction will be hurt, too. “It’s hard to build a house, or you might not go out for dinner, in a bad storm,” Justin Bloesch, an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University, told DealBook. While the construction industry typically rebounds well from a storm — a house will get built eventually, after all — workers in tourism and retail are more likely to take a bigger hit, especially if businesses are damaged or need to close, Bloesch said. That could lead to a temporary dip in jobs data. In October 2024, Fed officials estimated that Hurricanes Helene and Milton together had contributed to tens of thousands of lost jobs. A silver lining? A 2024 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that federally declared natural disasters can increase per capita income in the long run as investment pours in to rebuild infrastructure after the storm. Talking A.I. with the chief of BNYEvery week, we’re asking a leader how he or she uses artificial intelligence. Robin Vince, who leads BNY, explained to DealBook’s Sarah Kessler what he meant by the term “digital employees.” His answers have been condensed and edited. How do you personally use A.I.? If I want to purchase something; if I want to go to a specific place; if I want to have a vacation: Basically, everything that previously was me researching and then having to process and compare has now been outsourced to A.I. BNY has said it has more than 100 “digital employees” assisting teams. I’m interested in the language choice: digital employees. How did you decide on that? We don’t want to humanize a machine. Humans are magic. Humans bring creativity. And we don’t view our digital employees as replacements for our humans. We view them as teammates that can allow our people to spend more time doing things that add more value. That made us think, OK, well, then they’re sort of like junior team members who you can delegate responsibilities and work to. And if that’s the case, we can use the concept of an org chart to be part of our cultural embrace of this. We don’t have to reinvent the whole question of: Is this work for A.I.? Is it work for a human? You don’t worry about that when you’re thinking about whether to assign work to an analyst. How does it work in practice? I think digital employees are allowing us to speed adoption. We use the language of recruiting a digital employee, training a digital employee, managing and supervising a digital employee, and then doing performance reviews. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Deals
Politics, policy and regulation
Best of the rest
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
|
