JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on Monday that the prices announced by President Donald Trump last week would probably increase the prices of national and imported goods, weighing an American economy that had already slowed down.
Dimon, 69, addressed the pricing policy that Trump announced on April 2 in his annual shareholder letter, which has become a closely read screed on the state of the economy, proposals for problems in the United States and its point of view on effective management.
“Whatever you think of the legitimate reasons for the newly announced prices – and, of course, there are – or the long -term effect, good or bad, there are probably significant short -term effects,” said Dimon. “We are likely to see the inflationary results, not only on imported products but on internal prices, as input costs increase and increase interior products.”
“Whether the price menu causes or not a recession remains in question, but that will slow growth,” he said.
Dimon is the first CEO of a large bank of Wall Street to speak publicly at Trump’s pricing policy while global markets are blocking. Although the president of JPMorgan has often used his platform to highlight the geopolitical and financial risks he sees, this year’s letter arrives at an unusually turbulent moment. Actions have been in free fall since Trump’s announcement shocked the world markets, causing the worst week for American actions since the pandemic cocoin in 2020.
His remarks seem to go back from the previous comments he made in January, when Dimon said that people should “recover” as pricing because they were good for national security. At the time, the tariff levels discussed were much lower than what was revealed last week.
Trump’s pricing policy has created “many uncertainties”, including its impact on world capital flows and the dollar, the impact on business profits and the response of trading partners, said Dimon.
“The more quickly, this problem is solved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be difficult to reverse,” he said. “In the short term, I see it as a large additional straw on the back of the camel.”
‘Not so sure’
Although the US economy has performed well in recent years, helped by nearly 11 billions of dollars in government loans and expenses, it “was already weakening” in recent weeks, even before the announcement of Trump’s price, according to Dimon. Inflation is likely to be more sticky than many does not provide, which means that interest rates could remain high even if the economy slows down, he added.
“The economy is confronted with considerable turbulence (including geopolitics), with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and potential negatives of prices and” trade wars “, continuous sticky inflation, high tax deficits and still fairly highly high prices and volatility,” said Dimon.
Dimon also struck a somewhat disturbing note given the amount of American stocks that have already fallen from their recent summits. According to the CEO of JPMorgan, the actions and the credit differences were still potentially too optimistic.
“The markets always seem to be pricing assets assuming that we will continue to have a fairly soft landing,” said Dimon. “I’m not so sure.”
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