JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) 2019 legislative conference in Washington, April 9, 2019.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Jamie Dimon said its unlikely that the U.S. and China will agree on a trade deal before the 2020 election.
“I don’t expect it to happen before the elections, tell you the truth,” Dimon, CEO and chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase, said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York. “But I hope after that we have a fair trade deal.”
Dimon didn’t elaborate on why he thought an agreement between the world’s two biggest economies was unlikely to happen soon. But analysts have speculated that the Chinese government may want to wait for the outcome of what will be a contentious election before coming to terms with the U.S. on trade.
“They should take trade more seriously than they have,” Dimon said of China. “Fair means kind of reciprocal. Trade has never been reciprocal, but closer to reciprocal in a way that’s good for everybody” is the goal, he said.
Dimon added that the U.S. is in a superior position to China in many respects.
“People should look at China a little bit differently,” he said. “I say this out of respect. They don’t have enough food, water and energy. Their neighbors are really complicated, including the Koreas, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, India and Russia. They have 500 million people living in poverty and a GDP per person of $10,000.”
He concluded: “Even if we do a crappy job running this country for the next 30 years, our GDP per person will be three times theirs 30 years from now.”
