WSJ newsletter also reported Amex faces $350M OCC fine
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have endorsed long-stalled legislation that would give merchants the option to choose a different card network to process transactions when their customers use a credit card, the Wall Street Journal’s Morning Risk Report newsletter reported Thursday. The newsletter said the bill “could dent banks’ profits and erode Visa’s and Mastercard’s dominance,” and added that it “has a new champion, and he sits in the Oval Office.” It reported endorsements from “President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and some top lieutenants on the campaign trail.” The newsletter did not name the legislation or identify the members of Congress shepherding it.
The same newsletter reported that the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is fining American Express $350 million for failing to comply with federal bank-secrecy and anti-money-laundering rules. The OCC cited “inadequate resources, including staff without sufficient expertise, systemic internal control gaps, weak independent testing,” and “other shortcomings,” the newsletter reported.
On immigration policy, the newsletter reported that Vice President Vance’s antifraud task force is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and several tech-recruiting companies from a federal program that allows H-1B visa holders to apply for green cards. Officials alleged “widespread abuses of the visa system,” the newsletter reported. The action came the same day President Trump recognized Microsoft’s CEO and other tech leaders at an event in Washington.
On aviation safety, the newsletter flagged a pilot’s suspected attempt to crash a Boeing 737 MAX bound for Israel, presenting the incident as evidence that “one of aviation’s biggest safety threats is in the cockpit.” The newsletter reported that as commercial flying has become safer, the death toll from suspected intentional crashes has increasingly stood out. At least 800 people worldwide have died since 2005 in airline crashes suspected by U.S. government officials or confirmed to be intentionally caused by pilots, according to accident data cited by the newsletter. Disasters current and former U.S. officials believe resulted from deliberate pilot actions include a 2014 Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared over the southern Indian Ocean, a 2022 China Eastern Airlines crash in southern China, and a 2025 Air India crash in western India. Local investigators of those crashes have not reached the same conclusion as American officials or released their final investigative findings, the newsletter reported.
The newsletter reported that the World Trade Organization released new forecasts Thursday showing the AI investment boom is driving an expansion in global goods trade volumes at a pace last seen during the period of rapid globalization that was ended by the global financial crisis. The WTO warned, according to the newsletter, that the expansion is being driven by a small number of economies, with significant parts of the world missing out, and that trade in services is set to grow more slowly than previously expected as a result of the war between the U.S. and Iran.
The newsletter carried brief items on additional subjects: that Tehran’s sanctions-busting oil trade “entrusted billions of dollars to middlemen, and not all of it has come back”; that “the push for digital sovereignty is causing big headaches for multinational companies”; and that it reported “the approximate U.S. budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.”
President Trump said on social media, the newsletter reported: “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.” He said the U.S. had held productive talks with Tehran.
The Morning Risk Report is published by the Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Journal.