JP Morgan Chase & Co. is joining Apple, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Comcast and a plethora of other US corporate behemoths in rewarding the Trump administration for its success on tax reform with the jobs and bonuses that it covets.
On Tuesday, America’s largest bank by assets said it would increase wages, hire more workers and open new branches as part of a $20 billion investment, following the overhaul of the US tax code, as Reuters reported.
The bank will increase wages for 22,000 employees by an average of 10%, ranging from between $15 and $18 per hour, hire 4,000 employees and open up to 400 Chase branches in new cities, it said.
With the US gross domestic product expanding at its fastest clip years, a fact that has been repeatedly touted by Trump, along with his well-know proclivity for using the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a barometer of his performance.
Almost immediately after Trump passed the historic tax cuts last year – cuts that have been derided by critics for being overly generous to corporations and the wealthy – Comcast, Boeing, AT&T and several other companies announced they would hand out $1,000 holiday bonuses to employees. Like JPM, most of these companies also promised to boost CapEx. For example, AT&T promised to spend $1 billion in the US during 2018. Apple, which has announced possibly the most generous benefits from the tax plan, said it will repatriate most of its offshore cash pile and use some of the money to build a new customer support campus. In addition, it promised to spent $350 billion in the US during the coming five years. The company also awarded non-managerial employees with $2,500 stock bonuses. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs showered executives with early bonuses.
We now wait to learn which financial institutions will follow JPM’s lead and publicly announce any tax-related additional spending, surely to the delight of the Trump administration.
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