WASHINGTON, Jan 24 — After more than a month, the partial US government shutdown is “damaging” the world’s largest economy, the head of JP Morgan Chase said yesterday.
The impasse between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over funding for a wall on the border with Mexico is hurting growth, as are other factors like trade, banking chief Jamie Dimon told CNBC.
The impact on consumer and business confidence is particularly notable.
“Now it’s coming down a little bit, because of that, because of trade, all the noise around the world about populism,” he said.
Dimon also insisted on the need to resolve the US-China trade war.
“It’s the most important relationship geopolitically in the world for the next hundred years,” he said.
While acknowledging the administration “has raised very serious trade issues and they are right,” Dimon worried about the fits and starts in the talks between Beijing and Washington.
“Both sides want to resolve it. And you see every time it looks like we might resolve it, things get better,” he said. But when it “looks like we won’t resolve it things get worse.”
High-level talks are set to occur in Washington next week.
The White House on Tuesday had flatly denied media reports that American officials had called off a preparatory meeting this week, citing a lack of progress on key issues.
Wall Street fell sharply on the news, but recovered somewhat after the denial.
The countries last month agreed on a 90-day truce in the trade war but US duty rates on US$200 billion (RM827.4 billion) in Chinese imports are due to rise to 25 per cent if a deal is not reached by March 1.
“If you have tariffs in place on March 1, that would be bad for the global economy,” Dimon said. — AFP
