JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon sounds a little more optimistic about the effect tariffs may have on the US economy over the next several months.
“Maybe in July, August, September, October, you’ll start to see ‘did it have an effect?’” Dimon said of tariffs while speaking Tuesday afternoon at a Morgan Stanley conference in New York.
“My guess is it did, hopefully not dramatic. May just make the soft landing a little bit softer as opposed to the ship go down.”
His guess is that the effect of tariffs will cause employment to “come down, or come down a little bit,” while “inflation will go up a little bit.”
Read more: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
Dimon wasn’t the only big bank executive who offered his views Tuesday about how the tariff picture may play out in the near future.
Clients of Citigroup’s (C) global investment bank are looking at a 10% “floor” on tariff levels and are currently evaluating a baseline of between 10% and 20%, Viswas Raghavan, Citigroup’s head of banking, said while speaking earlier Tuesday at the same conference.
“Look, there is a lot of anxiety,” Raghavan said when referring to the impact of the looming tariffs on corporate boardrooms considering new deals.
Citigroup expects its second quarter investment banking fees to be up in the “mid-single digits” compared to the same period last year. In overall trading, revenue is expected to rise in the “mid- to high-single digits” from the prior year, according to Raghavan.
However, Raghavan did say that Citi expects its firmwide credit costs to rise by “a few 100 million dollars” compared to the $2.7 billion it reported in the first quarter.
Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO Ted Pick said the second quarter did start “slow, really pausing in a big way,” after the Trump administration’s early April “Liberation Day” tariff announcements.
But “now it has picked up and I think we’ll see how the last couple weeks go, but looks like it’s going to finish strong.”
In this current period, “I do think investment banking, specifically, is a tale of two quarters.”
Bankers also hailed a push by the Trump administration to reconsider some capital rules that require them to set aside certain buffers in the event of bad times.
“We actually are relevant in not just powering the real economy, but to be helpful when there is a wobble … And that’s why I think it is opportune for a repositioning of some of the regulatory framework,” Pick said Tuesday.
Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision, said in a speech last Friday that the central bank plans to host a conference next month meant to bring together bankers, academics, and other experts to examine whether the numerous capital requirements for large banks make sense.
“I would like to be part of fixing the system and making it safer and helping the smaller banks,” Dimon said.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
