Bank Bosses Reportedly Out of the Loop on Trump’s Tariffs

The heads of America’s biggest banks are reportedly disconnected from the White House’s tariff efforts.

To illustrate this fact, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Wednesday (April 9) shared the story of a recent meeting in Washington D.C. attended by the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

The conversation turned to their last communication with President Donald Trump, with many saying they had not had a substantive conversation with the president since the 2020 pandemic, the report said, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Although some banks have been in discussions with members of the Trump administration since the tariff-related market upheaval began, CEOs get the feeling their opinions don’t hold a lot of weight with Trump himself, the report added.

This is in contrast to earlier financial crises, the report argued. For example, when the COVID pandemic began in 2020, Trump convened a meeting with bank CEOs who discussed the steps they were taking to shore up the economy.

Now, a business community that had been excited by the prospect of Trump’s return to office is seeing deals collapse and worrying about the possibility of a recession.

The White House said it is in regular contact with business leaders and industry groups, the WSJ report added.

“The only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making, however, is the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the news outlet.

PYMNTS explored the impact of the tariffs on the FinTech world in a recent conversation with Amias Gerety, partner at QED Investors. He said the market upheaval means that high-profile companies like FinTechs such as Klarna and Chime, both of which have revenues in the billions, now face limited opportunities to land new funding.

“These are big, real companies,” Gerety told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, “but can they be aggressive right now? No. Everyone’s sitting on their hands and saying, ‘Let’s wait and see.’”

As for those smaller companies that don’t have access to financing, the situation is even more severe, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows. Those findings show that half of American small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on day-to-day sales just to stay afloat.

“Nearly one in five are pessimistic about their odds of survival over the next two years,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week. “Almost 7% think they might not make it.”