President Trump has touted a range of unusual ways to bring America’s national debt into check: Charging millionaire immigrants for ‘gold card’ visas, his tariff regime, and the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency.
But it’s not enough to convince Jamie Dimon that a debt crisis of America’s own making isn’t coming down the line.
The metric that speculators are most concerned by is the debt-to-GDP ratio, in layman’s terms: If an economy is growing fast enough to repay and service its debts. If growth slows too far behind borrowing, then lenders will question whether they will see returns on their investments.
The St Louis Fed calculates that at present, America’s ratio stands at around 120%—though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects this to surpass 150% by 2055.
“The deficit’s going to have to come down one day,” Dimon told CNBC-TV18. “Growth is one way of getting it down, but eventually we’re going to have to have a Simpson-Bowles type of thing to make more rational decisions about the deficit.”
The Simpson-Bowles Commission was an effort launched under the Obama Administration in 2010 to address national debt, though many of the recommendations made by the authority failed because they did not get enough backing from across the political spectrum.
While Dimon said the Trump administration was more pro growth, he warned: “But we haven’t really attacked the fiscal deficit problem yet. Growth will do some of that, I don’t know if it will do all of it.”
Of course, the U.S. isn’t the only nation with sky-high debt levels: The UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio is over 96%, France around 113% and so on.
“I don’t know when that becomes a problem,” said Dimon. “I can give you a logical argument that it can become a problem in six months, I can give you a logical argument that it might be six years, but it will become a problem. Like most problems, you’re better dealing with the problem than letting it happen.”
There are two options to bring this debt-to-GDP ratio back to a healthier equilibrium: either cutting spending to reduce borrowing, or increasing growth. It is the latter option that Dimon, who has led America’s biggest bank for two decades, prefers.
Dimon describes himself as a “free trade guy”, though with the caveats that unfair trade and national security spending needs to be minded, and said he hears similar noises from people within the administration.
Dimon, 69, argued that regulation is hampering America’s ability to grow (and rebalance its books as a result): “I think the regulation of the world has slowed down investment, permitting, building things. Anyone you talk to in any industry will tell you it’s almost longer to get permits and fight litigation than it is to build what you’re trying to build,” Dimon said.
“We need a growth strategy … growth is what allow you to pay taxes, pay your social safety nets, which means you need jobs, you need business,” Dimon added. “It’s good that they’re pushing that, I think too many governments were not pushing that.”
