Why is not Jamie Dimon really sorry?

The Wall Street guys who know JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he was not surprised by the comments he made last week that he could beat President Trump. .

But these same people also said that Dimon's comments were an indication of a largely underestimated story about the bizarre relationship between the businessman president and the business elite of that country.

The left likes to think that Trump has American companies in his pockets because of his efforts to reduce taxes and paperwork. But the relationship is more complicated. Yes, the nation's corporate titans really like what Trump did economically, but they also think he could just as easily blow up his ethics, his personal toxicity and his inclination to adopt bizarre commercial policies. .

Dimon just had to cajole to say it.

But. . . Why? Why would Dimon have upset the president, since JP Morgan is a heavily regulated bank? Part of it comes from the impetuous personality of Dimon (some would say volatile).

But I am told that Dimon also knows that at this stage of his career, and unlike most other CEOs, he has earned the credit for speaking.

He runs the only bank that would have survived the financial collapse of 2008 because he did not abuse JP Morgan's balance sheet to play on the excesses that emerged from the housing bubble, like almost all his peers. In addition, he is a centrist democrat who refused to sit down and let Barack Obama, then president, attack the wealth creators as a result of this collapse. It is not partisan politics.

At the time of Obama's presidency, Dimon appeared to be Ronald Reagan's second coming, accusing Obama of the class war and punitive regulation aimed at economic growth in those years. He also paid for his honesty. In response, Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, seemed to neglect nothing to find land on Dimon or his bank, resulting in huge fines and one of the most grueling periods of Dimon's long career on Wall Street.

Dimon survived the Obama years and JP Morgan remains the country's leading bank and one of the most profitable companies in the world.

I said that Dimon was not really a fan of any of the candidates in 2016, but he was quick to go to Trump when the president showed he was going to keep his election promise to free American companies. Trump and his acolytes have even launched the name of Dimon as secretary of the Treasury and a personal relationship has even taken shape.

Like other CEOs, Dimon was mortified by Trump's strange response to the Charlotteville riots and he (and other CEOs) dropped a corporate advisory board in protest. But at the end of Trump's first year, Dimon went to the White House to personally applaud the president's economic success. In January 2018 he led a procession of bank executives, giving Trump a hero welcome at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The real turning point for Dimon – and for many US companies – came this year when the president launched a series of threats against all of his trading partners, warning of tariffs and other retaliation.

Trump's fair trade obsessions are not compatible with the economic reality, especially in the manufacturing sector. And there seems to be no way to madness:
Nobody will dispute the idea that the United States has to deal with bad actors like China, which steals the intellectual property of companies in the United States to be able to do business in its markets. But Dimon could not understand why Trump placed NAFTA partners like Canada, or our European allies, almost in the same boat. After all, do not we need a coalition to put the maximum pressure on China?

Robert Mueller's investigation also has nervous business leaders. Most major banks have refused to do business with the Trump organization during the long and controversial history of the president as a real estate investor, and these executives fear that Trump's pre-presidential trade relations will make him vulnerable.

After Trump's brutal response to Dimon's comments, Dimon reversed his decision and said he was not running for president (now). But one thing Dimon did not do is apologize. This is because Dimon, like the vast majority of American companies, believes in every word he has uttered.

Charles Gasparino is a senior correspondent for Fox Business.