According to the old cliché, opposites attract. And there may be no greater example of this than the odd, interesting, and for the country beneficial relationship between Larry Fink and Donald Trump.
Yes, you read that right. Fink and Trump.
A match made in heaven? No, to be more precise, made on Wall Street, with the uber-globalist BlackRock chief of ESG fame once serving as Trump’s money manager, and the GOP populist former president (and according to polling, likely future prez) still seeking out Fink for insights into the economy, The Post has learned.
Sure, Trump likes to tout JPMorgan super-banker CEO Jamie Dimon as a possible Treasury secretary (more later why it ain’t happening) but it’s really Fink whom he likes, respects and speaks with, I am told.
The feeling is mutual, and it’s a relationship I explain in my upcoming book “Go Woke, Go Broke.”
During the Trump presidency, Fink was all in on Environmental Social Governance investing, yet somehow he was appointed to Trump’s business advisory council.
Seemed odd at the time, until you dug a little deeper. BlackRock had handled Trump’s investment portfolio for years (Trump invested in the BlackRock Obsidian Fund, described by the firm as “a global fixed income multi-strategy hedge fund.”)
When Trump invited a bunch of CEOs including Dimon to the White House in 2017, he immediately mentioned Fink’s presence.
“I see we have Larry Fink here, where is Larry Fink?” When he spotted the money manager in the crowd, Trump remarked: “Larry did a great job for me. He managed a lot of my money. I have to tell you, he got me great returns.”
I don’t know if BlackRock is still doing business with The Donald (a BlackRock flack had no comment on this column; the Trump campaign didn’t comment) but the relationship is still a working one, albeit quietly, I’m told by someone with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
And you can understand why it’s on the down-low. Fink is a longtime Wall Street Dem, touted as a Treasury secretary for Dem presidents going back to Barack Obama. His people are all over the Biden White House.
He’s a “proud globalist” (his words). BlackRock is often vilified by the right for its once-strident support of ESG.
He has been smeared for supporting woke investing. Taken to its extreme — as it once was — ESG forces oil companies to stop drilling and imposes strict DEI standards in hiring.
Trump, meanwhile, is expected to go full-on MAGA populism if elected. His choice of populist Ohio Sen. JD Vance as a running mate is one tell that tariffs, a weaker dollar, trade wars, more debt — all the stuff Fink hates — could be in the offing.
And yet go back and study both men’s comments on each other and you start to understand why they remain close — and why Trump might water down his economic populism in office if Fink has his ear.
Fink, of course, runs the world’s largest money management firm with $10 trillion in assets under management.
Say what you want about his association with ESG, Fink knows markets and, given BlackRock’s size, he has a commanding view of them from his office in New York City.
He would undoubtedly remind Trump that going full-on MAGA with tariffs and trade wars will be unsettling to the markets and the overall economy.
And Trump loved to tout the roaring stock market during his years in the White House when such policies were muted by more traditional economic conservatives on his team.
Political moderate
Plus, Fink is much more of a political moderate than the ESG-tainted image pushed by his critics on the right.
He and BlackRock have backed off ESG these days, deploying it mostly for clients (blue-state pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds) that ask for it.
He’s been meeting with GOP leaders on the Hill, in state government, and is no pal of super lefties like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, because BlackRock, for all its ESG talk, was and is one of the largest institutional investors in energy companies.
Trump, for all his populist rhetoric, has always been a political moderate as well; tax cuts and deregulation were about as “far right” as he went. He kept out of wars and didn’t take a sledgehammer to the budget.
In fact, he spent like a Democrat. His trade wars in his first term were mostly targeted at China, a worthy target if there ever was one, given its trade belligerence.
So why does Trump keep touting Jamie Dimon as a possible Treasury secretary instead of Fink?
Trump the real estate baron never gave up on his second pre-political career in reality TV. He knows what looks good.
My guess is Trump thinks Dimon looks the part better than Fink so he’s willing to ignore their past differences, which were significant.
Recall how Dimon once said he would make a better president than Trump “because I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is.” Ouch.
Trump, before he blurted out Dimon’s name for Treasury, posted on social media that the JPM chief is a “highly overrated Globalist.”
My sources at JPMorgan tell me Dimon wouldn’t take the job if asked; that means Trump will probably keep asking because he hates being told no.
And above all, The Donald is a pragmatist who in the word’s of Don Corleone prefers to “keep his friends [like Fink] close and his enemies [like Dimon] closer.”
Charles Gasparino is the author of the forthcoming book “Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America.”
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