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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been communicating with Donald Trump in recent months through secret back channels, helping the president-elect hammer out a policy agenda before and since his decisive White House victory, The Post has learned.
The 68-year-old Wall Street titan — who, like 78-year-old Trump, grew up in Queens in New York City — has acted as “a sounding board” for the incoming commander-in-chief’s economic manifesto, four sources close to Trump’s transition team said.
One GOP insider said the president-elect’s inner circle held a series of “no-holds-barred conversations” with Dimon — who at the time was rumored to be eyeing a government job himself.
“They have been speaking regularly for months,” said another GOP source briefed on the situation.
Three of the sources close to Trump said the secret back channel focused on plans for cutting government spending, banking regulation, taxes and trade.
A company insider added that Trump’s top aides set up the calls, which continued after the election, to “create a bit of daylight” between the two men and stop details of the exchanges leaking.
A spokesperson for the Trump transition team declined to comment. A JPMorgan spokesman also declined to comment.
The quietly cozy relationship between Trump and Dimon has flourished despite the banker’s cryptic and tight-lipped tendencies when it comes to politics. Trump had floated Dimon’s name as a possible Treasury secretary pick in June and later claimed he had won his White House endorsement — despite a lack of any public statement from Dimon to that effect.
Trump and Dimon also have continued to talk despite bouts of tension, including on Nov. 14 when the president-elect declared on Truth Social that Dimon ”will not be invited” to join his Cabinet. The banker promptly shot back: “I haven’t had a boss in 25 years and I’m not about ready to start.”
The JPMorgan CEO, a registered Democrat who declined to back either candidate in the White House race, had even reportedly toyed with the idea of joining a Kamala Harris administration but then ruled himself out of leaving the Wall Street giant when her poll numbers tanked, The Post previously reported.
On Nov. 22, The Post broke the news that Trump was also consulting with Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, a major Dem donor, on policy issues.
Nevertheless, the former” Apprentice” star’s admiration of Dimon, who has helmed JPMorgan Chase for nearly two decades and has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $2.6 billion, was described by one source as “a man crush.”
Another individual close to the president-elect said Trump “greatly appreciated” it when Dimon, an avid reader of the New York Post, told CNBC in January the eventual election winner was “kind of right” to criticize illegal immigration and weak defense spending by America’s NATO allies.
Dimon’s comments angered left-wingers within the Biden administration who then blacklisted Dimon from the White House in a fit of pique, as The Post exclusively reported.
Two weeks ago, the JPMorgan boss said Trump’s threat of slapping tariffs on Uncle Sam’s major trading partners “will bring people to the table” if “done wisely.”
Dimon, a vocal critic of current US banking rules, recently slammed the ‘onslaught’ of red tape drafted by Dem-backed regulators, launching a foul-mouthed tirade over a list of his most-hated pieces of legislation at a recent conference in New York,
“It’s time to fight back…I’ve had it with this s–t,” Dimon told the stunned audience.
The JPMorgan boss singled out regulations aimed at keeping banks resistant to financial storms by forcing them to hold more capital on their balance sheets. The proposal, known as Basel III, would see major lenders raise that emergency buffer by 9%.
“Things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies, a lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals,” Dimon said on Oct. 28.
Dimon, who pulled down a salary of $34.5 million last year, urged the US government in his annual letter to shareholders last May to deliver “effective policy-making” issuing a warning that “a politician’s dream is a businessman’s nightmare.”
Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said Trump’s second term as president will present “the biggest inflection point for banking regulation in three decades.”
“This is Jamie’s vindication,” Mayo told The Post. “He is looking at all the bureaucracy and red tape and saying enough of the regulatory theater. It’s like banking with one hand tied behind your back”
Mayo added that Trump potentially taking an ax to stringent banking rules “should mean borrowers get better rates for their loans and better services for customers.”
The top analyst said: “It would be foolhardy for any administration not to hear Jamie Dimon out. Everyone should at least be consulting him for ideas.”
The revelations that Trump has sought advice from a “kitchen cabinet” of Wall Street bigwigs comes after his appointment of staunch loyalist and hedge fund mogul Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary.
He has been hunkered down at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach building his team for his new administration.
Trump’s move to seek informal counsel from titans of American finance, who are outside his MAGA inner circle, could provide further reassurance to investors ahead of his second term in the White House that kicks off on Jan. 20.
