(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump said in a Bloomberg interview that he’s thinking about picking JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon as the Treasury secretary if he’s elected president.
According to “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary, Dimon wants the job.
“Everybody in financial services knows Jamie wants this job,” O’Leary said during an appearance Thursday night on NewsNation’s “The Hill.” “He wants it, and he would be perfect for it. … Picking the Cabinet people matters so much. … If this is what we’re gonna get in Trump 2.0, I really like what I see.”
Last year, Trump called Dimon a “Highly overrated Globalist” on his Truth Social platform. Dimon, like many other corporate executives, had condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who made an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 elections that Trump lost to Biden.
Also in the Bloomberg interview, Trump said if he’s elected he’ll allow Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to finish her term, which is set to end in May 2026. Powell’s seat on the Fed Board of Governors expires in 2028.
The Trump interview was conducted in late June, according to Bloomberg.
Powell said Monday he has no plans to leave his post as head of the U.S. central bank before his term expires. Powell was first appointed to the Fed Board of Governors by former President Barack Obama, but it was Trump who picked him to lead the central bank, a post Powell assumed in early 2018.
Trump turned against him soon after, railing against the interest rate hikes that the Fed delivered during Powell’s first year at the helm. Trump went so far as to discuss firing the Fed chief, although aides later said Trump came to the conclusion that he likely did not have the power to do so. That did not stop Trump from continuing to threaten Powell throughout his presidency, a practice President Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, has refrained from during his term.
Trump said in the Bloomberg interview that the Federal Reserve should abstain from cutting rates before the November elections in which the Republican presidential candidate faces Democrat Biden.
Powell has been asked repeatedly over the last week whether the election would play into the Fed’s decision on whether to cut rates, and Powell said again Monday that he and other central bank policymakers do not take politics into account in their decision-making.
Reuters contributed to this report.
