ARTICLE AD BOX
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has warned that President Donald Trump’s trade war could cause the United States to lose credibility overseas, while also urging the administration to “engage” in talks with China sooner rather than later.
Dimon, 69, was one of the most influential voices to come forward last week to predict that sliding into recession was “a likely outcome” for the U.S. if the president did not row back his aggressive reciprocal tariffs program.
Trump duly did so, introducing a 90-day pause for all countries other than China as punishment for its near like-for-like retaliatory measures, acknowledging that the markets had gotten “a bit yippy”.
While conservatives celebrated the U-turn as a masterly act of gamesmanship, uncertainty continues to linger.
In an interview with The Financial Times on Wednesday, Dimon expressed his fear that America could surrender its economic preeminence on the world stage if Trump persists with his efforts to remould global trade more to his liking.
“A lot of this uncertainty is challenging that a little bit,” the banker said of the country’s historic status as “a haven” of democracy, strength and prosperity.
“So you’re going to be reading about this nonstop until hopefully these tariffs and trade wars settle down and go away so people can say, I can rely on America.”
“We should be careful. I don’t think anyone should assume they have a divine right to success and therefore don’t worry about it,” he continued.
Having previously endorsed Trump’s plans and said that people with an aversion to tariffs should simply “get over it”, Dimon was invited to explain his recent change of heart.
“When they announced the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, they were dramatically different than people expected,” he said.
“Way off the table than what people expected. And that was shocking to the system. The global system, not just in the United States.”
Referring to the future of Trump’s tariff regime, he said: “I think we should be clear-eyed about what we’re trying to accomplish.
“And I also think we should do it with allies… I would want to negotiate eventually with Europe, the U.K., Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, and have a very strong economic relationship.”
On the president’s hostility to China, Dimon joined Xi Jinping in warning that a trade war has no winners.
“I don’t think there’s any engagement right now… it doesn’t have to wait a year. It could start tomorrow,” he said, implicitly urging Trump to call Beijing.
Dimon also expressed his confidence in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, commenting: “I know him a little bit. I think he’s an adult.
“I don’t agree with everything the administration is doing. So I’m not arguing that point.
“But I think he’s the guy who should probably be negotiating these trade agreements.”
In his interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business last week, which Trump is known to have watched and even promoted on Truth Social despite the dire warnings it contained, Dimon said that while it “is perfectly reasonable for someone to say that trade was unfair,” the president and his aides “have it wrong.”
The executive also criticized how the administration calculated its tariff rates for America’s allies, downplayed comparisons with the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, and again expressed hope that Bessent would be leading U.S. trade negotiations rather than the president himself.
English (US) ·