JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is calling for a broad recommitment to American ideals as his bank navigates geopolitical uncertainty, a teetering economy and the revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence.

Dimon in his annual letter to shareholders, published Monday, noted the country’s 250th anniversary as “the perfect time to rededicate ourselves to the values that made this great nation of ours — freedom, liberty and opportunity.”

“The challenges we all face are significant. The list is long but at the top are the terrible ongoing war and violence in Ukraine, the current war in Iran and the broader hostilities in the Middle East, terrorist activity and growing geopolitical tensions, importantly with China,” Dimon said. “Even in troubled times, we have confidence that America do what it has always done — look to the values that have defined our singular nation and sustained our leadership of the free world.”

Dimon, the longtime leader of the world’s largest bank by market cap, is among the most outspoken of U.S. corporate leaders. His annual letter offers not only a matter of record for his firm’s performance, but also sweeping perspectives on the global state of affairs.

In Monday’s letter, Dimon noted headwinds including global conflicts, persistent inflation, private market upheaval and what he called “poor bank regulations.”

Dimon said that while regulations like those put in place after the 2008 financial crisis “accomplished some good things … they also created a fragmented, slow-moving system with expensive, overlapping and excessive rules and regulations — some of which made the financial system weaker and reduced productive lending.”

He specifically cited negative consequences of capital and liquidity requirements, the current construction of the Federal Reserve’s stress test and a “badly handled” process at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Dimon also said JPMorgan’s reaction to revised proposals for Basel 3 Endgame and a global systemically important bank (GSIB) surcharge — issued by U.S. regulators last month — were “mixed.”

“While it was good to see that the recent proposals for the Basel 3 Endgame (B3E) and GSIB attempted to reduce the increase in required capital from the 2023 proposals, there are still some aspects that are frankly nonsensical,” Dimon said.

The CEO said the aggregate proposed surcharges of about 5%, the bank would need to hold “as much as 50% more capital across the vast majority of loans to U.S. consumers and businesses when compared with a large non-GSIB bank for the same set of loans.”

“Frankly, it’s not right, and it’s un-American,” he said.

Dimon identified geopolitical tensions as the primary risk facing his bank, namely the wars in Ukraine and Iran and their impacts on commodities and global markets — deeming war “the realm of uncertainty.”

“The outcome of current geopolitical events may very well be the defining factor in how the future global economic order unfolds,” he said. “Then again, it may not.”

He also cited a “realignment of economic relations in the world” brought on by U.S. trade policy. U.S. President Donald Trump has made tariffs a signature policy of his second term in office, introducing higher duties on dozens of trade partners and import categories.

Dimon also spoke to recent upheaval in the private markets, as fears around loans made to software firms spur massive redemption requests at private credit funds.

JPMorgan has been at the forefront of Wall Street firms introducing AI at every level of its business. Last year, JPMorgan Chief Analytics Officer Derek Waldron gave CNBC an early demonstration into how it’s using agentic AI to speed up work and improve results for customers and shareholders.

Sen. Tim Scott on Wednesday said he hopes the federal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell “goes away” so the Senate can take up the nomination of Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the head of the U.S. central bank.

“That proceeding going away allows for us to get the Fed fully functioning, back on target,” Scott, who chairs the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has vowed to hold up any Fed nominees until a federal criminal investigation into Powell is resolved. Trump floated the idea of firing Powell last year and lashed out at the Fed chair for refusing to cut interest rates to the extent he desired. Powell has denied any wrongdoing and has said he is being targeted for refusing to accede to Trump’s demands.

Powell was expected to testify before Congress on Feb. 11, but missed that date because of the federal probe, Scott said.

“I had a conversation with Jay about his testimony,” Scott said. “I recommended that he come before the committee.”

“At this point he is more concerned about the criminal proceeding ,” he said. “And I get that.”

The Fed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tillis is otherwise supportive of Warsh, who Trump nominated for the role in January, but doubled down on his blockade after meeting with the Fed nominee on Tuesday.

“This is not about people, it’s about process,” Tillis said. “I think this is a foul.”

“This is about this is bedrock principle of Fed independence,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday. “I have no earthly idea what the market reaction would have been if suddenly the perception is that the Fed chair serves at the pleasure of the president.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., another Banking committee member, told CNBC earlier Wednesday he sees no reason why some Democrats won’t support Warsh’s nomination.

“There’s really no reason by anything from he’s ever said or that he’s done that, that Democrats shouldn’t support his nomination,” Cramer, who was scheduled to meet with Warsh on Wednesday, said. “They’re going to be rigorous, of course, in their interviewing of him and and the cross examination … when his hearing takes place. But I think we should be on track to get him across the finish line so that there’s no gap between … the end of Jay Powell’s term and the beginning of the new term.”

The investigation into Powell is in part based on testimony Powell gave to the Senate Banking committee last year. Scott has said in the past that he did not believe Powell committed a crime in his testimony, sentiment he repeated Wednesday. He said the Senate would begin confirmation hearings for Warsh “as soon as possible.”

“At the end of the day … when he was before the committee he definitely was unprepared,” Scott said of Powell. “I think he was woefully unprepared. But he did not commit a criminal act when he was before the committee.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday officially nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Warsh, if confirmed by the Senate, would replace Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, for a four-year term.

Trump’s nomination was transmitted to the Senate, the White House said in a statement posted online on Wednesday.

That transmittal came more than a month after Trump first publicly announced he wanted Warsh as the Fed chairman.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said he would block Warsh’s nomination from proceeding in the Senate until a federal criminal investigation of Powell by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., is dropped.

Tillis’ stance could prevent the nomination from being considered by the full Senate.

Powell said in mid-January that he was under investigation in connection with the $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington, and his testimony about that project to the Senate.

The chair also said that “the threat of criminal charges” against him is directly due to him and other Fed governors refusing to bow to Trump and his demands that they cut interest rates more quickly than the president has demanded.

Last summer, Trump tried to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who sided with Powell on interest rate decisions. Trump, at the time, cited an allegation by a housing official he had picked that Cook had committed mortgage fraud, but his move to terminate her was seen as motivated by his ire over her stance on interest rates.

Cook, who has denied any wrongdoing, has remained on the Fed pending the outcome of a lawsuit against Trump challenging her removal.

The Supreme Court in January heard oral arguments in that case. The court has yet to issue a ruling on whether Trump can fire Cook.

AI robots will exceed the working population within a few decades as more firms adopt AI agents and continue to squeeze costs, a former Citi executive warned on Monday.

Rob Garlick, Citi Global Insights’ former head of innovation, technology, and future of work, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that as leaders continue to prioritize profitability, their human workers will be left in the dust.

“We have a leadership system in the economic terms and business terms that celebrates profitability,” Garlick said in a conversation with CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick and Ben Boulos.

“When you marry profitability up with the technology progress, we have the biggest trade in history coming, which is basically that artificial intelligence will be able to do more and more, better and better, cheaper and cheaper, and that will be able to substitute for people.”

Garlick, who recently authored “AI – Anarchy or Abundance? Why the Future of Work Needs Pro-Human Leaders,” explained that his previous research at Citi showed that the number of AI robots is going to skyrocket as a result of these business decisions.

“We’re going to go over the next couple of decades to more moving robots than the working population, and then you add on agents, little agents, and it is going to explode,” he added.

AI robots ranging from humanoids to domestic cleaning robots and autonomous vehicles are forecasted to increase to 1.3 billion by 2035, according to a 2024 Citi report led by Garlick. The number of AI robots would quickly increase to over 4 billion by 2050, per the insights.

The Citi report even measured how long it would take for a robot to pay for itself through the money saved by replacing a human worker, for example, a $15,000 robot would break even in 3.8 weeks for a $41 an hour human job, or 21.6 weeks for a $7.25 human job. Meanwhile, a robot that costs $35,000 would have a payback time of 8.9 weeks for a $41 an hour human job.

“You can already buy a humanoid today, which gives you a payback period versus human workers of less than 10 weeks,” Garlick told CNBC, citing a figure from his book. “Humans can’t compete on this basis.”

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report showed that 80% of leaders expect AI agents to be largely integrated into their AI strategy within the next 12 to 18 months. AI agents are a type of software program that can make decisions and complete tasks without much human direction.

Meanwhile, McKinsey & Company’s global managing partner, Bob Sternfels, noted that the company currently employs 20,000 agents alongside 40,000 humans, in an interview with Harvard Business Review. A year prior, the company only had 3,000 agents, and Sternfels predicts that in 18 months from now, there will be an equal number of employees and agents.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also shared similar views at the World Economic Forum’s flagship conference in Davos last month, saying that AI will likely surpass human intelligence by the end of this year.

“My prediction is, in the benign scenario of the future, that we will actually make so many robots in AI that they will actually saturate all human… there will be such an abundance of goods and services because my prediction is that there’ll be more robots than people,” Musk said.

Fears around AI replacing workers have mounted in the past year as major firms, including Amazon, Salesforce, Accenture, Heineken, and Lufthansa, have cited the technology as part of the reason for eliminating thousands of roles.

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at the International Monetary Fund, told CNBC in January that AI is “hitting the labor market like a tsunami” and warned that “most countries and most businesses are not prepared for it.”

In the U.S., AI played a role in almost 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025, according to December data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

However, some leaders are striking a more positive tone. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang predicts that the “AI boom” will create six-figure salaries for the workers building AI and chip factories. Huang said the technology will boost skilled trade work, such as for plumbers, electricians, construction, and steel workers.