At times like these, one is reminded of Wile E. Coyote running out into thin air before remembering that gravity exists.

In a brief respite from warning there’s still a risk of a “hard landing” for the US economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told attendees of the bank’s conference in Shanghai on Thursday that parts of the company’s business in China had “fallen off a cliff” in the past few years. But he also seems to be just brushing it off his shoulder, saying that other businesses, like asset management, “should hopefully grow over time.”

Business in Beijing

The US-China trade war, full of tit-for-tat tariffs, has affected everything from microchips and miniskirts to car parts and soybeans. So it’s no surprise that Wall Street is also facing its own trials and tribulations, especially as both Beijing and Washington ramp up scrutiny on Western firms’ presence in the Middle Kingdom. 

Competition with China’s domestic companies is always going to be a major hurdle for outsiders. For example, Apple is still one of the biggest phone vendors in the country, but its market share is getting squeezed by the likes of Honor, Huawei, and Vivo. When it comes to investment banking, the in-house rivals are Citic and China International Capital Corp. However, they’ve also been hit by China’s stagnating economy, which is experiencing deflation, massive local government debt, and a shrinking working-age population:

• Investment banking activity has been slowing overall in China. Though expected to rebound in 2024, dealmaking steadily declined over the past four years. In 2023, the number of mergers and acquisitions fell to 2,574, and their aggregate transaction value dropped to 1.28 trillion yuan, the lowest since 2018, according to an S&P Global analysis. 
• Also, initial public offerings have raised only 60 billion yuan, or roughly $8.3 billion, so far in 2024, an 85% plunge year-over-year, according to Dealogic data reported by the Financial Times.

Can Take it or Leave it: Dimon told those in Shanghai that JPMorgan will “just keep on investing in whatever country we’re in,” according to the FT, but China may not be the crucial market like it is for Apple or Tesla. Just last fall, Dimon said the firm would exit the nation altogether if the US government ordered it to. Meanwhile, analysts at JPMorgan Private Bank remain bearish on the Chinese economy, citing Beijing’s focus on security and self-reliance over growth and economic reforms. In its latest quarter, JPMorgan reported that its total exposure in China was $14 billion. That’s definitely a nice chunk of change, but it’s paltry compared to the $77 billion in the UK or roughly $96 billion in Germany.

In this case, Taylor Swift is anything but the anti-hero.

The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, alleging that it has violated antitrust laws by maintaining a monopoly in the event-ticketing industry. The suit, which was joined by 30 states, seeks remedies including a breakup of Live Nation.

I’m the Problem, It’s Me

One might ask how a single company comes to control roughly 80% or more of the ticketing business for major US concert venues in the first place, considering the monopoly risk didn’t appear that low back in 2010 when Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged to create one giant company. But, you see, the combined company promised it wouldn’t retaliate against venues that chose not to use Ticketmaster. According to the DOJ, Live Nation repeatedly violated that promise, leading to a modified settlement in 2019 to institute an external monitor. And in 2022, the Biden administration reopened a new probe after concerns it wasn’t abiding by the settlement terms. Which is all very staid and methodical — until you burn the Swifties:

• Ticketmaster’s website crashed in November 2022 when tickets for Swift’s Eras Tour went on sale, with thousands reporting outages and others thrown on a waitlist instead of being able to obtain a precious presale code.
• Swift quickly came to her fans’ defense, saying at the time it was “excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” And New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez perhaps prophetically tweeted: “Break them up.”

Cruel Summer: Live Nation is just the latest target in the Biden administration’s ramped-up antitrust policing. The DOJ has two epic monopoly cases going against Google and sued Apple in March for allegedly hindering smartphone innovations. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is pushing to force Meta to sell off its Instagram and WhatsApp divisions and sued Amazon last year for allegedly monopolizing marketplace services. No word yet on plans to investigate Swift’s monopoly of the Billboard charts.

Even the threat of killer turbulence isn’t enough to halt our holiday travel plans.

The Transportation Security Administration projects as many as 3 million travelers will pass through airport checkpoints on Friday alone, setting the stage for one of the busiest Memorial Day weekends for travel ever. Unfortunately for Boeing-wary wanderers, highway traffic won’t be much better, let alone safer.

Thunder Road

In fact, highway traffic may be pretty terrible. As many as 43 million people are expected to travel up to 50 miles on the road between Thursday and Monday, according to AAA estimates reported by the Associated Press. That’s enough to count as the most Memorial Day traffic in nearly two decades. And the weekend culminates what’s been a busy travel season all year. Travel already spiked last weekend, with both Friday and Sunday marking the two busiest flying days of the year so far, according to the TSA. If 3 million people pass through security checkpoints Friday, it’d mark the busiest travel day ever recorded — besting last year’s Sunday-after-Thanksgiving figure of 2.9 million fliers.

It’s all kicking off what may be the busiest travel summer in memory:

• Major US airlines expect to serve 271 million passengers between June 1 and August 31, according to trade group Airlines for America. That’s up from last year’s record-breaking 255 million passengers.
• Meanwhile, inflation isn’t biting the travel industry — at least quite so hard. Airfare is down 6% compared to a year ago, according to recently released data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, while hotel room fares are down around 0.4%.

“We haven’t seen any pullback in travel since the pandemic. Year after year, we have seen these numbers continue to grow,” AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz told the AP. “We don’t know when it’s going to stop. There’s no sign of it yet.”

I Hate NY: One place that isn’t exactly feeling the tourist love? New York. The city’s status as a tourist attraction still hasn’t quite recovered from the Covid pandemic, according to a report out Thursday from the New York State Comptroller’s office. Last year, 62.2 million travelers took a trip to the Big Apple, down from 66.6 million in 2019. Visitor spending did reach $48 million last year, which marks a 1.3% increase from pre-pandemic levels. Hey, maybe inflation isn’t so bad after all?