J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says the United States can’t rule out stagflation, which describes the precarious combination of high inflation, rising unemployment and stagnant growth, as a result of the steep international tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.
“I just think there’s a chance that … you’ll have stagflation,” Dimon said Thursday during an interview with Bloomberg at the lender’s annual Global China Summit. “I’m not saying it’s gonna happen, I don’t want the readers to say, ‘He’s predicting,’ I’m not.”
He continued, “But we have to be prepared for something like that.”
Trump announced a sweeping 10% baseline tariff on all U.S. imports last month, with levies on China set even higher, in what he has painted as a just crusade to revive American manufacturing, while economists have warned about a potential recession, or worse.
“I think that global fiscal deficits are inflationary,” Dimon said Thursday. “I think the militarization of the world is inflationary. The restructuring of trade is inflationary — and this is not all an American thing — and the infrastructure needs are inflationary.”
