JP Morgan Chase Boss Jamie Dimon is selling a vision for the future of the Western world that depends on Europe rebooting its flagging economy and strengthening its defenses.
“We believe the United States should offer significant incentives to Europe. If we implement meaningful economic and military reform, including everything we think is important for security and resilience, the United States will negotiate one big, beautiful economic and free trade agreement with Europe,” Dimon said in an op-ed published Monday in the Wall Street Journal.
“Many of the current disputes between Europe and the United States are minor compared to the scale and benefits of this agreement, which could be extended to friendly democracies including Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines,” Dimon said.
He added that a seamless trade relationship would be a “game changer” for the United States and its allies, allowing both countries to “set global rules on trade” and keeping them together “even in the face of authoritarian pressures.”
The free trade approach advocated by Mr. Dimon stands in contrast to the more protectionist policies currently being pursued by the Trump administration.
America’s relations with some of its biggest trading partners, including the European Union and Canada, have soured amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs and aggressive negotiating tactics.
Mr. Dimon’s WSJ op-ed emphasized the need for the European Union to complete the long-awaited capital markets union and banking union to improve competitiveness. Implement the recommendations of the Draghi report. and ensure the bloc’s defense, manufacturing, and energy independence.
“A Europe that can mobilize capital, expand innovative enterprises, integrate defense production, reduce strategic dependence, and generate stronger growth will become a more capable security partner, a more resilient economic partner, and a stronger counterweight to China’s economic power,” he said.
This is not the first time the bank’s chief has criticized Europe’s lack of globally important companies, stagnant economic growth and lack of sovereignty in key areas. Last year, he told European business and political leaders at an event in Ireland that Europe was “losing out” compared to the United States and Asia.
Dimon also wrote this week that the United States must take steps to maintain the world’s leading military and economic power and reinvigorate “the American Dream and American values that are fading for too many of our fellow Americans.”
“A renewed commitment to America’s values and alliances and bold reforms by Europe will be a geopolitical and economic home run that will ensure the strength of the Western world for the next 250 years,” he said.
