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JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon warned European leaders they have a competitiveness problem and that they are currently “losing” the battle to rival the US and China.
“Europe has gone from 90 per cent US GDP to 65 per cent over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good,” Dimon said at an event in Dublin organised by the Irish foreign ministry. “You’re losing.”
The comments from Dimon, one of the most influential voices in global finance, underscores the challenges facing the European Union as it battles to invigorate its economy.
The continent’s former top central banker Mario Draghi last year demanded a new industrial strategy for Europe with investments of €800bn a year to maintain competitiveness with the US and China.
It is an even blunter message from Dimon than he made in his most recent annual shareholder meeting in April, where he said “Europe has some serious issues to fix”, and urged European nations to “significantly reform their economies so they can grow”.
Dimon, who has run JPMorgan since 2006, also warned that financial markets had become too relaxed about Donald Trump’s repeated threat of tariffs.
Investors on Thursday brushed off the US president’s latest threat of a 50 per cent tariff on copper, 200 per cent tariffs on the pharmaceutical sector and levies on countries including Japan and South Korea.
“Unfortunately, I think there is complacency in the market,” Dimon said.
He said Trump had so far been correct in backing down from his biggest threats on tariffs, invoking the so-called Taco trade based on the premise that “Trump always chickens out”.
“I hate to use the word ‘Taco trade” because I think he did the right thing to chicken out,” Dimon said.
