- JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon remains cautious about ongoing market volatility driven by geopolitical uncertainty, particularly around U.S. tariff policy, despite recent trade deals with the U.K. and China. While he sees the U.S. as a strong long-term investment, Dimon warns that recession risks and inflationary pressures remain, and believes continued volatility is likely due to unresolved global issues and potential sector-specific tariffs.
President Trump’s intermediary deals with China and the U.K. have done little to convince Jamie Dimon that market volatility arising out of White House tariff policy is over.
The JPMorgan CEO has warned that uncertainty prompted by Trump’s foreign policy isn’t good for businesses, but has maintained that the tariffs are unlikely to be as inflationary as some critics fear.
The man dubbed the ‘White Knight of Wall Street’ added this week that while it’s positive that the Trump team at last secured its ‘first mover’ in Sir Keir Starmer’s Westminster government, there is still room for further unease.
While Dimon said some clients had made money on the highs and lows of recent weeks, others had lost out, adding: “I would expect continued volatility.”
“I think it’s a mistake to think we can go through all the things we’re going through and the volatility itself will come down,” Dimon told Bloomberg in Paris on Thursday.
He added: “Markets are quite unpredictable. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty out there that you can’t discount: War in Ukraine, terrorism in the Middle East, Iran, huge deficits, our tax bill—which I would like to see a good tax bill passed—the tariffs, the reaction of [a] country to tariffs.
“The EU and the U.K. are about to negotiate, I think they have a chance to actually develop a great relationship, partially making up for the disaster that Brexit became. So yeah, those are uncertainties. You can’t eliminate them because you want to.”
That being said, the outlook is looking up somewhat courtesy of the deal signed with the U.K., plus Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement this week that the U.S. and China had agreed to simultaneously lower their tariff rates by 115% on one another.
“I’m grateful they did the U.S.-U.K. deal,” Dimon added. “It’s an agreement in principle, so there’s a lot of uncertainty still, and there’s a lot of uncertainty still in the China thing, but at least we started. It obviously calms down the markets.”
He added that even after the 90-day pause, he doesn’t expect an “immediate resolution to the satisfaction of everybody.”
President Trump has been dropping breadcrumbs about markets such as semiconductors, copper and lumber, which all may be targeted with specific sanctions.
UBS’s chief investment officer, Mark Haefele, wrote in a note seen by Fortune that there are many downward pressures on tariffs, including “a growing docket of legal challenges and the steady erosion in the president’s job approval.”
However, despite the myriad reasons for continuing de-escalation, which analysts interpreted as beginning with the announcement of a U.S.-China agreement, UBS is unconvinced that the only path is downward.
“Despite these pressures to lower tariffs, the Trump administration is also preparing the groundwork for a more surgical increase in tariffs beginning this summer following trade investigations into strategic industries like pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, lumber, copper, and semiconductors,” Haefele wrote.
Recession still an option
While some on Wall Street are downgrading their recession expectations—for example, Goldman Sachs lowered its outlook from 45% to 35% this week—Dimon is still not comfortable taking the outcome off the table.
“I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more, and slowing down the economy,” Dimon added. “If there’s a recession, I don’t know how big it will be or how long it will last.
“Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point.”
Despite this, Dimon, a self-described “full-throated, red-blooded, patriotic, unwoke, capitalist CEO,“ remains as bullish as ever on America.
“Is America a bad investment destination? No,” Dimon said. “If you were to take all of your money and put it in one country, it would still be America. It’s still the most prosperous nation on the planet, it’s got the best military on the planet, and it has huge amounts of innovation.
“People are catching up—that’s a good thing. China is doing some very good innovation in medical and AI and we should assume they’re going to continue to do that, but America’s still got the best.
“We don’t have anything to be ashamed about. We should fix our problems because we would grow a lot faster, which would help all of our citizens.”
