JPMorgan Chase Bank (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon is warning that a recession isn’t “off the table” despite the recent trade truce between the United States and China.
Dimon made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg TV while attending JPMorgan’s annual Global Markets Conference in Paris and cited the global geopolitical tensions as a variable to watch.
“The geopolitical situation is very tense, very difficult, and hard to resolve,” he said of the trade wars and the military conflicts currently rattling the globe.
He did also note that some of the uncertainty shadowing the markets pre-dates the Trump administration, citing large deficits, inflation, and higher interest rates.
“I will defer to economists who give it about a 50 percent chance,” Dimon said, adding that all of the geopolitical uncertainty is inflationary and slowing the economy.
His comments also come amid the slowing of consumer spending, which some economists worry could tip the nation into a recession.
Data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show that overall consumer spending was flat in April, rising 0.1 percent after rising 1.7 percent in March. The report noted that there may have been no increase at all in April and that the .01 is within the survey’s margin of error.
Sporting goods and hobby stores saw sales trend downward by 2.5 percent, leading the declines, while spending at department stores fell 1.4 percent.
Economists say that a continued de-escalation of the U.S.-China trade war would help relieve the economic pressure. Goldman Sachs (GS), for instance, lowered its odds of a recession in the U.S. this year from 45 percent to 35 percent on Tuesday in the wake of the easing of the tariffs between the two countries.
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