Jamie Dimon: Fixing These Tariff and Trade Issues Should Be A Good Thing To Do, That Will Get Some Uncertainty Behind Us (2025)

It is announcing an 84 percent tariff on all U.S. goods after President Trump confirmed that the U.S. will move forward with a tariff of 104 percent on Chinese goods. Beijing also adding six U.S. companies to its quote, unreliable Entity List, and 12 companies to its quote, export control list.

JPMorgan Chase, Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, releasing his annual letter to shareholders this week, writing tariffs raise prices and slow down economic growth. We are here now with the man himself to talk more about the backdrop in this Fox Business Exclusive. JPMorgan Chase, Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon. Jamie, great to see you.

JAMIE DIMON, CHAIRMAN & CEO, JPMORGAN CHASE: Maria, happy to be here.

BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for joining us, and you know, congratulations on this incredible career and your leadership. We appreciate your leadership.

DIMON: Thank you.

BARTIROMO: You've seen so many crises in your days before, financial crisis, dotcom, etc, etc. How does this moment in time compare to those?

DIMON: Yeah, well, it's nothing like, oh, wait, OK so in clarity, nothing - - and the 2000 dotcom thing was very brief. I mean, lasted like, nine months or something like that. So --

BARTIROMO: But how about the financial crisis when you almost paid $2 a share for Bear Stearns.

DIMON: Yeah, we paid $10.

BARTIROMO: I know. You wanted $2, initially.

DIMON: Paulson (ph) wanted two, I wanted to get the deal done so. It doesn't compare to that. The world was massively over leveraged. There was a mortgage problem, you're going to have, you know, half a trillion, or maybe a trillion dollars of actual, real problems. The banking system is not that leveraged today, but it's serious.

And it was serious before the last election. We have a huge, complex geo political situation, huge fiscal deficits, not just here, but around the world, sticking inflation, which I personally think will not go away so quick. And then you have, you know, what's going to happen to tariffs, what's going to happen to trade, what's going to happen -- so tariffs and trade are just part of that mix. They're not -- they don't completely stand alone.

BARTIROMO: So what do you think about the tariff plan?

DIMON: I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to say that trade was unfair. There were unfair trade things. And remember, it's not just tariffs, it's tariffs. I think they have the VAT wrong, how they understand it, and I think they should really get a better understanding to make it easy to negotiate.

But there are all these non-tariff barriers around food and energy and then subsidies, which, you know, China is famous for. So it's totally reasonable to say we want to make trade better. But I also want to point out to the Americans, we have the best economy in the world. Our GDP per person is $85,000. China's is $15,000.

So you got to put a little bit into context. But, you know -- and then, of course, when they put the tariffs, and it was way beyond what people expected, that will cause a inflation, slow down growth. But I hope what they really do is let Scott Bessent, when he's professional, negotiate, and I know Japan is here. I gather Korea, Vietnam have called, and then eventually Europe.

Get those things done quickly. If you want to calm down the markets, show progress in those things and let Scott take the time. Trade deals are very large and very complex. They can't be done overnight, but you really have to have teams working to get them right.

BARTIROMO: It sounds like you're taking a calm head in the face of all of this, despite the fact that we've seen $6 trillion in market value wiped out in about a week?

DIMON: Yeah, I'm taking a calm view, but I think it could get worse if we don't make some progress here. And of course, you know, trade wars, as you saw China raised the race today, you know, and people get angry, and they're going to have responses. And every country has got choices. So there are short term choices, there are long term choices.

And I also want to point out, if you kind of look forward in the next 60 days, every company is going to be telling you guys what it means to them. I think today I saw a Delta remove their guidance and things like that will affect stock prices again. So this -- it's not over yet. And then you've seen tremendous moves in swap prices, asset prices, Treasury prices. There's a 10-year Treasury auction today, and how they go. So, yeah, let them settle down. Take a deep breath, negotiate some trade deals. That's the best thing they can do.

BARTIROMO: I want to get back to what you just mentioned the earnings season in a moment, because I spoke with a number of CEOs just last night, and they said, I'm cutting expenses. I'm cutting my cap back. So I want to -- I want to get your take on how that plays out. But look at the 10-year this morning, Jamie. It's up almost 17 basis points.

DIMON: Yeah.

BARTIROMO: And I just spoke with the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and asked him if part of this is China selling treasuries. Here's my conversation, a snippet of it with Scott Bessent. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: There's one of these deleveraging convulsions that's going on right now, in the markets, and I think it's in the fixed income market, there are some very large leverage players who are experiencing losses that are having to deleverage. I believe that there is nothing systemic about this.

I think that it is an uncomfortable but normal deleveraging that's going on in the bond market, and I expect that as we see the leverage come down, the risk managers tapping people on the shoulders, telling them to bring their books down, which is what happens every couple of years, as leverage builds up, then the market will calm down.

BARTIROMO: Is China jumping treasuries to try to put pressure on this -- this market?

BESSENT: Yeah, I think it works against their purposes if they are dumping treasuries, because if they're dumping treasuries, then they have to buy something else. If they sell dollars, then they strengthen their currency. And as I said earlier, they've actually been weakening their currency, which is a loser for everyone.

BARTIROMO: Right.

BESSENT: And again, when I hear all these stories that the dollar is no longer going to be the reserve currency, if you end up with the Chinese who are willing to use their currency as a trade tool, that doesn't seem like a very good reserve asset to me.

BARTIROMO: Yeah.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: Jamie, your reaction.

DIMON: Well, he's exactly right. You have a lot of deleveraging hedge funds and players out there, which he obviously is quite experienced in things like that. And that is the initial effect. There will be other effects. And we still are the reserve currency, which will be true for a long time. But a very important point, China and Russia have made it clear they want to kind of dismantle the post-World War II system.

And I think the goal of all this trade stuff should be to make Europe and our trading partners, Japan, Korea, Philippines, stronger, not weaker, bring them closer as we build up our military, and any trade that protects military, that we should definitely do. I mean, there's -- we made a lot of mistakes about as you know, pharmaceuticals, you know, shipping, pharmaceutical green penicillin --

BARTIROMO: That we're so reliant on China for all this stuff.

DIMON: We can't rely on any potential adversary for things we need for our military. And so you know there I'm quite sympathetic. That we should do. That's absolutely paramount.

BARTIROMO: And you wrote about this in your annual letter to shareholders this week, and you talked about national security being the number one priority here, but it takes time to get the supply chains to America. So in terms of getting this done fast, I mean, how much faster can this happen? And was there another way to get corporations to move supply chains here, other than forcing them to it? Because we've been talking about this for a long time.

DIMON: You can't really force them, but I guess there are tons of ways that people manipulate trade, but, you know, or and its subsidies and its land grants and its guarantees. We need to do that for rare earths, pharmaceutical devices, semiconductor chips. We should do it right. I mean, we shouldn't do in a way that wastes a lot of money and lets corporations feed at that great tax trough or something like that.

And it could be done, but it will take years, but we -- that we need to start right away. And even -- even some of these other supply chains, there are a lot of companies are too -- too reliant on one country. It'll take them to move. But I think you got to separate, you know, making sneakers from making guns. You know, one is, like, really important. One is, you know, it's not as big a deal, so, but --

BARTIROMO: Great point.

DIMON: But the point about national security is economic security, national security, are almost directly related in long run. Hopefully, when these wars get resolved, and I hope in the interest of Ukraine, where they have sovereignty (ph) was over, and the interest of Israel, without being constantly attacked by terrorists on three sides, you need to keep the economic alliance together.

I think it would be in Russia's and North Korea's, Iran's and China's interest to fragment the Western world, and I think that would be the biggest long term mistake. I'm talking about over 30 or 40 years. But I don't want to read the book about how the West was lost.

BARTIROMO: Yeah, but -- but at the same time, timing is of the essence, right? I mean, you just mentioned a moment ago that we're headed into the earnings series -- series. You're obviously reporting earnings on -- on Friday, so we're sensitive to that. But is there anything you can tell us about the environment right now, in terms of loan demand, in terms of defaults?

Because while all of this is happening, you've got, for example, your economics team predicting a recession this year, and you've got corporations saying, I'm cutting back on spending and investing right now.

DIMON: Yeah. So normally I don't pay that much attention anecdotes, but you heard them. They're real. I hear from just everybody now. Going to cut back a little bit. I'm going to wait, see what happens. That -- that is kind of recessionary talk. So we've been in this kind of very soft landing for a long time.

Consumers have money. They were spending money. Corporates were making profits. I do remind people, part of that was because of our extraordinary fiscal spending. You know, we borrowed and spent $11 trillion since COVID. And that obviously drives a lot of growth, that drives corporate profits.

So I think what we're going to see now is corporations making announcement after announcement about, don't expect my guidance to be true. I'm going to hold back here a little bit. These are long term decisions they have to make. They may want to see the tax bill, which hopefully they can get done in July. So yeah, I think you're going to see a slowdown. I think the economists are probably right to say that you should expect that.

BARTIROMO: Well, how significant a slowdown. I mean, are you seeing defaults?

DIMON: Not yet, but I expect them. And the other thing, which we haven't had a -- any slowdown, a real recession and COVID was so short, I almost don't include it and so long that if you have rates going up a little bit, and inflation is sticky and credit spreads are gapping out, which they're going to, I think you see more credit problems than people have seen in a long time.

BARTIROMO: And yet you got to get ahead of it and cut expenses. Now you've have talked about the 10 percent to all of your different groups at JPMorgan. You say, JPMorgan is going to be fine, but we could see a softening of the macro story.

DIMON: Yeah, so JP -- I would just -- I did say to the JPMorgan people, the 10 percent. That's -- I think we just got a little sloppy in last five years. I'm kind of mad at myself. I remind people, you know, what kills companies is complacency, arrogance, bureaucracy, and the little speech I gave, I was talking about Sears and AMP and Eastman Kodak, and it's amazing to me that these companies, that they just get too lax in what they do. And we got a little bit of that too. So going back to killing bureaucracy.

You know, we put some head count controls in place, not because we're not doing well, not forcing people to cut. I call it just like going for your run and eating your spinach, it's not a big deal, you know, we can -- we can handle that, and we become a better company. People are having a lot of fun, by the way, raising their hand and saying, why are we doing this? Why can't we cut this out? Whenever I hear them, I say just -- just do it. Go ahead. You got my permission.

BARTIROMO: So are you hearing that from CEOs as well in terms of business managers? Are they now going to start pulling it in and cutting back on various expenses?

DIMON: I think you're going to see a little bit of that, yes.

BARTIROMO: Yes? But how significant would you expect that? Do you personally expect a recession?

DIMON: I am going to defer to my comments at this point, but I think probably that's a likely outcome.

BARTIROMO: Because markets, I mean, when you see a 2000 decline -- 2000 point decline, it sort of feeds on itself, doesn't it? Because it makes you feel like you're losing money in your 401K, you're losing money in your pension. You got to cut back.

DIMON: Yeah, I always remind people, markets aren't always right, but sometimes they are right, and I think this time they are right because they're just pricing in uncertainty at the macro level and uncertainty at the micro level, the actual company level, and then how it affects consumer sentiment, it's hard to tell.

You know, consumers still have jobs, wages are going up the low end, which I think is a good thing, but if companies start cutting back, yeah, the consumer sentiment changes, and business sentiment changes. I think you've already seen business sentiment change a little bit. Hopefully, no one is wishing for that, but hopefully, if there is one, it will be short, but --

BARTIROMO: Well, I mean --

DIMON: -- I do think fixing these tariff issues and traders would be a good thing to do. That will get one major uncertainty behind us. We have the strongest economy in the world. It would be good not to add to the uncertainty out there.

BARTIROMO: How long would you wait to see these fixes take place?

DIMON: I don't know. I mean, look, I would -- whatever they can do. You know, like I said, trade is really complicated. I mean, these trade agreements are thousands of pages long. It is product by product and area by area, non-trade barriers, subsidies. You know, there's tons of food. If you spend time with just food alone, you'd be shocked how many different food agreements there are, and disagreements and protection of local farmers, which almost every country does. So the sooner, the better.

BARTIROMO: Well, in terms of --

DIMON: They should get at it.

BARTIROMO: In terms of the capital markets business, you got to believe that trading is going to do well in the first quarter. But we've sat here with various CEOs who said, I'm not going to do my IPO right now. I'm not going to do my deal in terms of M&A. We spoke with Ken Leon from CFRA, and he says that the first quarter was very weak for those kinds of capital markets businesses.

DIMON: Yeah.

BARTIROMO: Without giving anything away, because you're reporting earnings.

DIMON: Yeah, so I always tell volatile markets generally are good for capital markets trading business, but they're generally not good for equity, debt issue and stuff like that. So, you know, I mean, it's very important.

JPMorgan is going to be in fine shape, almost no matter what happens, because we always run the company so we can serve people in good times and bad times, just like we did during the great financial crisis. But I do expect the bad part of these volatile markets isn't what it does to a JPMorgan. It's what it does to the capital markets and the ability of companies to raise money.

So IPOs are being canceled. You know, a couple of -- a couple of hung deals out there in the high yield land and bridge loans and that just -- that just slows everything down. And so that's the bad part of these volatile markets. It's not that it's bad for us. It's bad for small businesses, middle sized companies. You know, large companies can usually get the funding they need.

BARTIROMO: President Trump has been trying to put America first. Is he doing that while also alienating foreigners to America? Somebody told me last night, look, I'm trying to do a deal in Canada. They say we don't want to buy American in any way right now. Do you see any anti American sentiment?

DIMON: Yeah. We've lost a couple bond deals already because they're not mean. They simply say that, you know, look, we'd rather just do this with the local bank than with a U.S. bank. Look, we could overcome that. You know, that's why part of me thinks that don't let this go on too long, because it's causing cumulative damage, including huge anger at the United States.

Like I said, my goal would be keep the allies together, get them together, keep work on that. You know, you fix the trade. Where there's unfair trade, fix it. Doesn't matter whether ally or not, it should be fixed. And I think there are legitimate complaints about military spending. You know, they need to spend more on the military. So I hope -- I hope what you saw like for Europe is a wake-up call, fix their economy. You know, they have huge bureaucracy, you know, red tape, which I now call blue tape. And you know, if they fix that, that'd be good for them. And then, you know, pull them closer and keep the Western world together.

BARTIROMO: And the European Union, by the way, I don't know if they're unified. I mean, it's called the European Union, but, you know, Germany is in a different place than I think Italy is. So how does President Trump do that?

DIMON: Yeah. Europe should seize the moment. There's the Draghi report. I think they all acknowledge they need to spend more on the military. They all acknowledge, I think their GDP per person has gone from like something like 75 percent of America's to 50 percent of America's. I mean, they got to look inside and say, what did they do?

And it's literally rules, regulations and red tape and anti-business and too expensive tax systems and labor laws that were meant to protect workers, but very often these laws have passed, they have the complete opposite effect.

They protect existing workers, but not new workers. They don't adopt technology fast enough, they don't have enough innovation. They could fix that. And I actually think you now have between President Macron, Chancellor Merz, Meloni, Keir Starmer, those people coming together, and they're kind of saying all that. They have to do it. It's hard, you know, in -- in Europe.

BARTIROMO: And Meloni is on her way to the U.S. to meet with President Trump on the 17th. I n your annual letter, you wrote about how successful JPMorgan is moving, what did you say? $10 trillion or $12 trillion --

DIMON: A day.

BARTIROMO: -- a day in terms of the amount of business that you're handling. And you gave the kudos to all of your people. What's interesting when I was reading that, I thought, you know, it's interesting that here's a bank that's moving so much money and doing so much activity, and you're not even the small -- the biggest in the world. Chinese banks are much bigger. So tell us about that a little and the competition that you face when you go up against some of these large Chinese banks for business because I think most people realize now China is an adversary, if not an enemy right now.

DIMON: Yeah. I put them in the adversary category, not enemy, but we compete with banks in every country. We compete with fintech here. And that $10 trillion just, it's important to put in context, $10 trillion of money being moved, $3 trillion of securities being bought, but it's also representative of the enormous flows around the world. So when people can estimate, they predict the effect of global flows of capital, it's hard to do.

You're talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars a day that are moving around as people making all these different decisions about where to invest and where to send their money and who to pay, things like that. So the Chinese banks are bigger in terms of total assets, not in terms of market cap, probably about the same size. They're supported. You know, there's -- they're state control. So it's very, very different.

They're kind of part of how they look at it. And, you know, China has this state I'm going to call it state capitalism, kind of this mix of subsidies and how they run things, and it gives them the benefit they can run their country as a whole, you know. And we don't, you know, we have a democracy, and it's very different.

But I do think, what I do have to say about us is we need to get our own act together. We need to get -- if you want to have America be very strong, our own health care, our own infrastructure, our own immigration, our own regulations, our own red tape, our own affordable housing. We could be growing at 3 percent a year, and I think we should be striving to that. And had we done that the last 20 years, our GDP per person be $15,000 more.

So, you know, to me, China isn't -- if you look at us, you know, $85,000 GDP. Theirs is $15,000. We have all the food, oil and energy we need. They import 10 million barrels of oil a day. You know, they're surrounded. They have a very complex geo political neighborhood, Philippines, Koreas, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Russia, you know. And they're kind of angry with some of those folks too, because of what they're doing the South China Sea.

We don't. We have peace. We have the Atlantic and the Pacific. We have peace with Mexico and Canada. We're kind of blessed. We're blessed with the gifts of God and the gifts of the founding fathers. And so we should just get our own act together, and we'll be fine.

BARTIROMO: Are there areas around the world that you see right now that are doing well?

DIMON: Well, America is probably doing the best, and you know, part of that is fueled by the fiscal spending. I remind people, we are exceptional. We're not quite that exceptional. If other countries had borrowed and spent a trillion dollars, they would have had more growth too. But there's other side to that, the sticky inflation and things like that, but -- but there is no -- look, a lot of countries do a lot of things well, but there's no country with quite the innovation we have, quite the capabilities.

You know, this energy, you know, it's an unbelievable thing, because not only does it reduce the cost for all of our industrial companies, but you know that LNG that we can send to Europe, it's cleaner for Europe, because their alternative is coal and they need it to be secure, you know. So to me, we have this unbelievable position in energy, it's unbelievable. Our financial services, we have the best financial markets in the world. I'm talking about all of it, capital markets, hedge funds, private equity, investors.

BARTIROMO: Right.

DIMON: And it is part of the fly wheel that creates all this innovation you see. And you don't just see it in New York, you know, you see in Silicon Valley, but you see in St. Louis, in Kansas, in Austin, you know, in Nashville and so, you know, this country is unbelievable. You know, democracy works despite the fact, you know, we seem to have a lot of polarization these days.

BARTIROMO: I want to get into policy with you, Jamie, and get your thoughts on what policies are needed now. The tax cuts conversation is going on. We're going to take a short break and tap into the energy capacity in America and the efforts right now to extend the Trump tax cuts. I'm talking with the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIMON: I just want to start with we have like, what a -- what a company. I don't know about you guys, but I see this company in action. It just blows me away. And the quality of the people, the respect of our clients, how much they want us in countries around the world. It's extraordinary. It's all based upon the things that you do and how you do it, things like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: And that's JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, talking with his leadership, management teams. That was so inspiring, Jamie. Tell us a little about what you were doing there.

DIMON: Yeah. So I was with 300 of our top leaders from around the world and from all around the world. And I did a master class in learnings and things that we have to do, and I went through a lot of fun stuff, but like, how you report your numbers, how you understand them, bureaucracy, running meetings. You know, not showing up on time.

You know people being on their phones, whether on these zooms, why we're all going back to work, and it was great. I really haven't done that like that before, and I had a little fun doing it. I actually prepared for it, it wasn't all off the cuff, and it's available on YouTube now. So we kind of -- we had it edited for to protect the innocent and protect myself, but -- but hopefully it's fun for people.

BARTIROMO: I loved it. And before we end this interview, I'm going to ask you for some tips for our younger generation and how they can achieve anything close to what you have achieved. But Jamie, let me get to policy for a moment, because President Trump met with House Republican holdouts, people who say, no, I'm not going to sign that bill because there's not enough spending cuts in it.

And he did get some potential no votes changed to yes votes. How important are the tax cut extensions to be put in this reconciliation plan, and what's most important policies that you think are needed right now?

DIMON: So let me go to taxes first, because there's always a misnomer about this. Our tax rate was 36 percent, then they reduced it to 21. The whole world 20 years earlier had been 36 percent and it come down to 21. So 21 is just the average of the OECD countries now. And I think it's very important, in my view, to have a very competitive international tax system.

Taxes have a lot of other attributes. It's got to be competitive because it drives capital, people, brains, IP overseas. I would always much prefer to tax, you know, individual income than corporate or business income. One drives growth, one doesn't. If you drive growth, by the way, whatever you own will be worth a lot more.

So when you talk about policy, and in my Chairman's letter, I have taxes, get it right. I would also, by the way, double your income tax credit. So if you're a single mother with two children, making $12,000 a year, the government will give you $6,000. I would almost double it. I'd get rid of the child requirement. I'd get more money into the hands of the lower paid. I think it's very important.

It creates jobs, creates dignity, better household, less crime, more household formation. It brings people into the workforce. It'll probably drive the GDP, and to me, it's a small price to pay. So we talk about the people left behind, EITC, skills training. So one of the things is education, do more in education, health care. We -- you know, we spend 18 percent or 19 percent of GDP in health care, infrastructure.

But another big one, which I know that the administration is going after is I call them, I'm changing the name to blue tape, because the people out there who seem to love it, they want more regulations. And a lot of these regulations, I should point out, are written by academics who've never been in the real world, and therefore the unintended consequences dwarf the intended ones.

But when you look at America, what happened to us? This can-do nation. Whenever I talk to people about -- and we talk about permitting, but it's permitting, it's licensing, it's litigation. We spend 2 percent of our GDP on (inaudible), on litigation. Most other countries are 1 percent and most people on both sides say it's capricious. It's slow, it's arbitrary, it's expensive.

You know, what are we doing to ourselves? We can't build bridges --

BARTIROMO: Right.

DIMON: -- tunnels, roads, schools, rare earths, you know --

BARTIROMO: That's what we heard from Mike Wirth at Chevron.

DIMON: These are all inflationary. They slow down growth. They are demoralizing when you can't move to a different state, because you have to -- I think, to cut hair in New York City, you have to get three licenses. It'll take six months. You can't afford to move. And so I can give you a million examples.

They -- we had a pipeline that's going to be built from Pennsylvania to New York to bring gas into New York, you know, but people just chopped it. They didn't want to do it. So people, here have to pay more for energy, and it's dirtier because the gas would have been cleaner than the coal that's being used is dead. We can't build solar. We can't build offshore, affordable housing. I mean, we need to clean this stuff up.

BARTIROMO: So are you comfortable with the deregulation that President Trump has put out there yet? Or you want to see even more?

DIMON: No, I think they have to -- I think we should have change our mindset, that we should have proper regulations to protect food, protect energy, protect financial services, protect consumers, but it should be a mindset of continued improvement, not more.

We just -- we just add layer after layer of inconsistent rules and regulations. But then, you know, every business I know is got to struggle with, and you guys should get one day, get like, 10 small businesses up here, have them sit at your table over here and ask them what they have to do with federal, state and local rules and regulations, auditing taxes. It'll blow your mind.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

DIMON: I mean and by the way, who does it hurt the most? Small businesses and lower income.

BARTIROMO: Right.

DIMON: And so when we attack these things, let's remember why we're attacking them. We're not trying to make it easier for JPMorgan, JPMorgan will be fine, and it's accurate to say that big companies can pay the cost more, but it makes it much harder to form small businesses.

BARTIROMO: So you've talked about tax extensions, you've talked about deregulation, you touched a little on tapping into the energy --

DIMON: Housing mortgages. We could reduce the cost of mortgages by changing -- energy is unbelievable, like we have, you know, we're self-sufficient. You know, we have the LNG, which is an unbelievable thing, which, you know, we stopped for a little bit of time. But the thing about energy is it's -- particularly gas, it's clean. It's good for allies. It's good for us economically.

And you're going to find, when we -- you want to conquer climate, a lot of it's going to come from the R&D that comes out of the big companies, whether it's bio mass or carbon capture or better batteries, I think we'll find the solution, but it won't be because people are guessing. It will be the R&D that takes place so and we should also use the LNG to help our allies, Korea, Europe, Philippines, they need it. Japan --

BARTIROMO: And I think President Trump, right now is working on something to get our LNG sold across the world, even more, to Japan, to the European Union, rather than Russia. Let me move on to policy from the Fed, because tomorrow, the Senate Banking will hold the confirmation hearing of Miki Bowman as Vice Chairman of Supervision at the Federal Reserve, taking over from Michael Barr. What changes? What do you think happens now, should she be confirmed?

DIMON: So, yes, she should be confirmed. It needs radical changes. You know, there's this notion, I read sometimes you know the rules and regulations, the banks -- there -- our rules and regulations for capital (inaudible) have been going up like this for 15 years. We've been talking about Basel III for 10 years. OK?

And you know, it just shows you how slow it is. And we've -- the byzantine -- I have that little spaghetti chart I do, the byzantine -- now, Dodd Frank did some good stuff, OK, capital liquidity, resolution for large investment banks, but we just added more and more, and it's hard for the regulators. If you look at my chart, seven people do housing, five people do derivatives, six people do this.

The number of public companies has gone from like 8000 public companies, 25 years ago, to 4000 today. The -- you know, the cost of being public is far too high. There's too many frivolous -- I hate the proxy advisors. There's too many frivolous shareholder meetings, which, again, a little less frivolous.

We have the best in the world but we need to make it better. And we should ask ourselves, what do you want? Why are you doing this? Do -- you know 80 percent of the mortgage business is outside of banks. If the regulators said that's what we want, that would be fine, but it wasn't. They didn't do it for that reason. You know, private credit is growing rapidly. I'm not against private credit.

Hedge funds, you know, private equity owned companies. Is that what they wanted? Is that the best system for America? Is that the most transparent? And so yeah, I think regulators should look at what can you do that's better, and we need to have conversations about what works. I actually think, and what bothers me the most, had they really thought about it and done things properly, Silicon Valley Bank wouldn't happen. First Republic wouldn't happen.

We can reduce bank runs. We can make it much easier to resolve a bank, we can create more liquidity in the system, and we create more lending in the system.

BARTIROMO: Well, isn't there --

DIMON: That's what we should be doing, and not just this constant being up on, you know, large banks -- and other thing is we want to help the small banks. So this isn't just about, you know, we're the biggest bank to small banks, you know, but we have a million ideas how we can help the small banks.

BARTIROMO: Right.

DIMON: And so we should be working on those things, as opposed to just yelling at each other.

BARTIROMO: Because there's been a brush stroke approach to all banks like JPMorgan should not be the same as you know, the small bank in your local neighborhood.

DIMON: The small banks have legitimate complaints, and the rules and regulations are killing them. They can't afford -- one of the guys told me that they have for every loan officer, they have a compliance officer. I mean, you can't afford that kind of stuff, and that filters in the system. Remember, these community banks are, they're excellent. They're stalwarts in their communities. They do things that we can't do, so we want to help them. And they are always doing, yes, they shouldn't have one size fit all regulation.

BARTIROMO: And then there's all the shadow banks, right? I mean, over the last couple of years, you've seen market share go away from the large bank and into folks like Apollo and BlackRock and all of those alternatives.

DIMON: Yeah. The regulators were supposed to ask -- under the law the administrative prizes act is supposed to say, what's the cost benefit of this? How did it work? Why are we doing it? What do we want to happen? And they basically never did that.

BARTIROMO: Yeah.

DIMON: And you know, to me, let's just go back, roll up your sleeves and do what we should have done in the first place.

BARTIROMO: Jamie, my final question for you, after all of these incredible years of success and leadership in this great nation and the world, what tips do you want to give the younger generation who is coming up and watching you and wanting to learn how you achieved all of this? Give us some advice.

DIMON: So work hard. Learn, learn, learn, read everybody. Don't get into the echo system of Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, progressives. Read, everybody. Learn, learn, learn, get to know. Learn from everybody else. You know, I learned tremendous amount from talking to other people, not just from seeing by myself.

So educate yourself. Learn how to take care of yourself. You know, if you don't take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul, your friends, your family, you're not going to have a great life and enjoy it. Enjoy it every step of the way. And so have a little heart in humanity. Treat people properly. You know, I grew up, you know, the way you treat people. You treat everyone fair and honest and forthright, whether it's a cab driver or a waiter or a CEO and so -- and you'll have a great life.

And by -- these kids, anyone who's depressed, as long as we don't have like, nuclear war, they're going to have an unbeatable life. They're going to inherit, like, people say, their next generation is in bad shape. Really? They're going to inherit a country that's worth $200 trillion - $300 trillion. They're probably going live to 120. A.I. is going to cure some cancers.

BARTIROMO: Yeah.

DIMON: They shouldn't be bemoaning their situation. They should be looking at this world and saying, what can I make of it? You know, what can I do better than the folks before me?

BARTIROMO: Jamie, it's great to have you this morning.

DIMON: Maria, thank you.

BARTIROMO: Thank you so much. Jamie Dimon. We'll be right back.