By Scott Murdoch
(Reuters) – A senior JPMorgan Asset Management investment strategist said he has held back on some of his public comments on U.S. tariffs due to concerns about the impact his full opinions would have on his colleagues and on the Wall Street bank.
In a webinar titled “The 2025 Tariff Shock”, Michael Cembalest, chair of market and investment strategy and a Wall Street veteran, said he had not been able to fully express his views on the potential impacts of the tariffs on markets and economies.
In the April 7 webinar, he said the tariffs were a “kind of sledgehammer, brute force approach.”
Cembalest did not reference President Donald Trump directly in his remarks on holding back some of his opinions, which he made in the webinar posted on the bank’s website. The remarks were first reported by Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“This is the first time I’ve ever had to do a call where I had to think about the things that I was saying, not just in terms of how they reflect our views on markets and economics,” Cembalest said in comments made towards the end of the webinar.
“But I had to think about how they might reflect on the firm and some of its colleagues at a time when people are being held accountable for their views and the things that they say in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.
“So I’ve said most of what I wanted to say on this call but not all of it.”
In a statement, a JPMorgan spokesperson said: “Michael covered the goals, opportunities and risks of the administration’s policies.”
New York-based Cembalest did not respond to requests for comment sent outside of normal regular business hours.
The comments come amid a broader climate of corporate caution in the U.S. as the Trump administration signs executive orders targeting law firms, restricting their access to government officials and threatening to cancel federal contracts held by their clients.
Those orders targeted firms that represented clients who have challenged Trump’s policies in court, employed lawyers involved in prosecutorial investigations against Trump, or represent people who previously have investigated him. His orders have also faulted the firms for workplace diversity policies.
Cembalest’s comments follow an April 2 report he published entitled “Redacted: Straight talk from the CEO front lines on Liberation Day” in which large chunks of text about the tariffs were blacked out.
“The next phase either involves trading partners providing sufficient concessions to the White House so that tariffs are temporary, or an escalating tariff conflict that could cause damage to the global economy,” he wrote in the report.
“I don’t think tariffs are the only issue causing US CEO business confidence to decline. I believe the following issues are also negatively impacting CEO confidence and capital spending plans on the front lines, so let’s talk about them frankly.”
Large parts of the next three pages of the report were then redacted with black boxes covering the text. Reuters could not immediately determine why text was redacted.
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney, additional reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Sam Holmes)
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