Finance

JPMorgan Chase opens more small-town branches in middle America

Published

8 months ago

August 5, 2024

Three years ago, JPMorgan Chase became the first bank with a branch in all 48 contiguous states. Now, the firm is expanding, with the aim of reaching more Americans in smaller cities and towns.

JPMorgan recently announced a new goal within its multibillion-dollar branch expansion plan that ensures coverage is within an “accessible drive time” for half the population in the lower 48 states. That requires new locations in areas that are less densely populated — a focus for Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon as he embarks on his 14th annual bus tour Monday.

Dimon’s first stop is in Iowa, where the bank plans to open 25 more branches by 2030.

“From promoting community development to helping small businesses and teaching financial management skills and tools, we strive to extend the full force of the firm to all of the communities we serve,” Dimon said in a statement.

He will also travel to Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas this week. Across those six states, the bank has plans to open more than 125 new branches, according to Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase Consumer Banking.

“We’re still at very low single-digit branch share, and we know that in order for us to really optimize our investment in these communities, we need to be at a higher branch share,” Roberts said in an interview with CNBC. Roberts is traveling alongside Dimon across the Midwest for the bus tour.

Roberts said the goal is to reach “optimal branch share,” which in some newer markets amounts to “more than double” current levels.

At the bank’s investor day in May, Roberts said that the firm was targeting 15% deposit share and that extending the reach of bank branches is a key part of that strategy. She said 80 of the firm’s 220 basis points of deposit-share gain between 2019 and 2023 were from branches less than a decade old. In other words, almost 40% of those deposit share gains can be linked to investments in new physical branches.

In expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint, JPMorgan is bucking the broader banking industry trend of shuttering branches. Higher-for-longer interest rates have created industrywide headwinds due to funding costs, and banks have opted to reduce their branch footprint to offset some of the macro pressures.

In the first quarter, the U.S. banking industry recorded 229 net branch closings, compared with just 59 in the previous quarter, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. Wells Fargo and Bank of America closed the highest net number of branches, while JPMorgan was the most active net opener.

According to FDIC research collated by KBW, growth in bank branches peaked right before the financial crisis, in 2007. KBW said this was due, in part, to banks assessing their own efficiencies and shuttering underperforming locations, as well as technological advances that allowed for online banking and remote deposit capture. This secular reckoning was exacerbated during the pandemic, when banks reported little change to operating capacity even when physical branches were closed temporarily, the report said.

But JPMorgan, the nation’s largest lender, raked in a record $50 billion in profit in 2023 – the most ever for a U.S. bank. As a result, the firm is in a unique position to spend on brick-and-mortar, while others are opting to be more prudent.

When it comes to prioritizing locations for new branches, Roberts said it’s a “balance of art and science.” She said the bank looks at factors such as population growth, the number of small businesses in the community, whether there is a new corporate headquarters, a new suburb being built, or new roadways.

And even in smaller cities, foot traffic is a critical ingredient.

“I always joke and say, if there’s a Chick-fil-A there, we want to be there, too,” Roberts said. “Because Chick-fil-A’s, no matter where they go, are always successful and busy.”

Finance

China’s response to U.S. tariffs will likely focus on stimulus, trade

Published

2 hours ago

April 3, 2025

Business Finance News

Chinese national flags flutter on boats near shipping containers at the Yangshan Port outside Shanghai, China, February 7, 2025.

Go Nakamura | Reuters

BEIJING — China’s reaction to new U.S. tariffs will likely focus on domestic stimulus and strengthening ties with trading partners, according to analysts based in Greater China.

Hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced additional 34% tariffs on China, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce called on the U.S. to cancel the tariffs, and vowed unspecified countermeasures. The sweeping U.S. policy also slapped new duties on the European Union and major Asian countries.

Chinese exports to the U.S. this year had already been hit by 20% in additional tariffs, raising the total rate on shipments from China to 54%, among the highest levied by the Trump administration. The effective rate for individual product lines can vary.

But, as has been the case, the closing line of the Chinese statement was a call to negotiate.

“I think the focus of China’s response in the near term won’t be retaliatory tariffs or such measures,” said Bruce Pang, adjunct associate professor at CUHK Business School. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese-language statement.

Instead, Pang expects China to focus on improving its own economy by diversifying export destinations and products, as well as doubling down on its priority of boosting domestic consumption.

Watch for cascading tariffs as tariffs reroute trade within Asia, says economist

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has since September stepped up stimulus efforts by expanding the fiscal deficit, increasing a consumption trade-in subsidy program and calling for a halt in the real estate slump. Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting with tech entrepreneurs including Alibaba founder Jack Ma in February, in a show of support for the private sector.

The policy reversal — from regulatory tightening in recent years — reflects how Beijing has been “anticipating the coming slowdown or even crash in exports,” Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said in a report, ahead of Trump’s latest tariff announcement. He pointed out that the pandemic-induced export boom of 2021 enabled Beijing to “launch a massive regulatory campaign.”

“My view stays the same,” Hu said in an email Thursday. “Beijing will use domestic stimulus to offset the impact of tariffs, so that they could still achieve the growth target of ‘around 5%.'”

Instead of retaliatory tariffs, Hu also expects Beijing will focus on still using blacklists, export controls on critical minerals and probes into foreign companies in China. Hu also anticipates China will keep the yuan strong against the U.S. dollar and resist calls from retailers to cut prices — as a way to push inflationary pressure onto the U.S.

China’s top leaders in early March announced they would pursue a target of around 5% growth in gross domestic product this year, a task they emphasized would require “very arduous work” to achieve. The finance ministry also hinted it could increase fiscal support if needed.

About 20% of China’s economy relies on exports, according to Goldman Sachs. They previously estimated that new U.S. tariffs of around 60% on China would lower real GDP by around 2 percentage points. The firm still maintains a full-year forecast of 4.5% GDP growth.

Changing global trade

What’s different from the impact of tariffs under Trump’s first term is that China is not the only target, but one of a swath of countries facing hefty levies on their exports to the U.S. Some of these countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, had served as alternate routes for Chinese goods to reach the U.S.

At the Chinese export hub of Yiwu on Thursday, businesses seemed nonchalant about the impact of the new U.S. tariffs, due to a perception their overseas competitors wouldn’t gain an advantage, said Cameron Johnson, a Shanghai-based senior partner at consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions.

He pointed out that previously, the U.S. had focused its trade measures on forcing companies to remove China from their supply chains and go to other countries. But Chinese manufacturers had expanded overseas alongside that diversification, he said.

“The reality is this [new U.S. tariff policy] essentially gives most of Asia and Africa to China, and the U.S. is not prepared,” Johnson said. He expects China won’t make things unnecessarily difficult for U.S. businesses operating in the country and instead will try harder to build other trade relationships.

Since Trump’s first four-year term ended in early 2021, China has increased its trade with Southeast Asia so much that the region is now Beijing’s largest trading partner, followed by the European Union and then the U.S.

The 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) joined China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in forming the world’s largest free trade bloc — the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — which came into being in early 2022. The U.S. and India are not members of the RCEP.

“RCEP member countries will naturally deepen trade ties with one another,” Yue Su, principal economist, China, at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note Thursday.

“This is also partly because China’s economy is likely to remain the most — or at least among the most—stable in relative terms, given the government’s strong commitment to its growth targets and its readiness to deploy fiscal policy measures when needed,” she said.

Uncertainties remain

The extent to which all countries will be slapped with tariffs this week remains uncertain as Trump is widely expected to use the duties as a negotiating tactic, especially with China.

He said last week the U.S. could lower its tariffs on China to help close a deal for Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations.

But the level of new tariffs on China was worse than many investors expected.

“Unlike some of the optimistic market forecasts, we do not expect a US-China bilateral grand bargain,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a note Thursday.

“We expect tensions between these two mega economies to worsen significantly,” he said, “especially as China has been making large strides in high-tech sectors, including AI and robotics.”