Wall Street’s biggest firms on Friday began to attempt the tricky two-step of revealing the toll of President Trump’s whiplash tariff policy without outright criticizing a man who has repeatedly lashed out at the financial world for slights both real and imagined.
The careful choreography came at the start of earnings season, a quarterly ritual in which publicly traded firms disclose their financial results and, in many cases, give projections. It’s not typically of interest for many besides professional investors, but it took on new importance and anticipation this week with the market turmoil that has accompanied the escalating trade war between the United States and its major trading partners.
The stage was set in particular for JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the country, whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has styled himself a frank speaker and publicly said he puts his country above his job. In his annual shareholder letter, released on Monday, he warned that Mr. Trump’s saber rattling could damage America’s standing in the world. Two days later, he talked up the benefits of some tariffs on Fox Business in a rare interview that Mr. Trump later said he watched shortly before announcing a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries except China.
On Friday morning, Mr. Dimon was back to being bearish on tariffs, saying in a statement accompanying his bank’s earnings that there were “potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars.’” He will no doubt elaborate on that as he takes questions from the media and Wall Street analysts later in the day.
Leaders at Wells Fargo, which also reported its latest earnings on Friday, “expect continued volatility and uncertainty and are prepared for a slower economic environment,” Charlie Scharf, the bank’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We support the administration’s willingness to look at barriers to fair trade for the United States, though there are certainly risks associated with such significant actions,” he added.
Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the asset management giant, said on Friday that “uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations.”
Stacy Cowley contributed reporting.
