In a stark message to European leaders, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has warned that Europe is facing a significant competitiveness problem, and is currently “losing” the economic battle against rivals such as the United States and China.
Speaking at an event organized by the Irish foreign ministry in Dublin, Dimon highlighted a worrying decline in Europe’s economic share, noting that “Europe has gone from 90 per cent US GDP to 65 per cent over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good. You’re losing.”
The Financial Times reports that Dimon, one of the most influential voices in global finance, delivered a blunt assessment that echoes concerns raised by other European figures. Last year, Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, called for a robust new industrial strategy involving €800 billion in annual investments to boost Europe’s competitiveness.
Dimon emphasized the continent’s shrinking global economic scale: “We’ve got this huge strong market and our companies are big and successful, have huge kinds of scale that are global. You have that, but less and less.”
His comments mark a sharper tone than his remarks at JPMorgan’s annual shareholder meeting in April, where he urged European nations to “significantly reform their economies so they can grow” and acknowledged that “Europe has some serious issues to fix.”
Dimon also addressed concerns about the current state of US financial markets, criticizing their complacency regarding President Donald Trump’s repeated tariff threats. Despite Trump’s recent warnings of imposing tariffs as high as 50 percent on copper and 200 percent on pharmaceuticals, investors largely shrugged off the potential impact.
“There is complacency in the market,” Dimon said, referencing what he called the “Taco trade”—a tongue-in-cheek theory that Trump ultimately “chickens out” of escalating trade wars, which Dimon reluctantly agreed was sometimes justified.
Looking ahead, Dimon warned of political and economic turbulence in the US if the economy weakens, suggesting that Trump could face challenges but also expressing criticism of the Democratic Party’s approach, labeling some of their actions as misguided “wokeness.” He notably described Zohran Mamdani, who recently won the Democratic primary for New York mayor, as a “Marxist.”
On the political front, Dimon dismissed speculation about a possible third term for Trump—currently prohibited under US law—but suggested the former president’s son Eric might eventually seek office. Dimon quipped that if Eric Trump ran for president, he “might consider it too,” despite personally having no political ambitions.
