(Zero Hedge)—There was a brief glimmer of hope for equity futures this morning, when amid the market rout, JPM CEO Jamie Dimon urged a quick resolution to the uncertainties sparked by Trump’s tariffs and warned against a potentially “disastrous” fragmentation of America’s long-term economic alliances.
“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” Dimon wrote in his annual shareholder letter. In the near term, “we are likely to see inflationary outcomes, not only on imported goods but on domestic prices, as input costs rise and demand increases on domestic products.”
While Dimon cited a raft of lingering questions around the new policy, including potential retaliatory actions by other countries, the impact on investments and capital flows, and the possible effect on the US dollar, he conceded that there are “of course” some legitimate reasons for the action, and that he hopes “the long-term effect will have some positive benefits” for the US.
And how can he not: after all, as Bessent said over the weekend, the US market and economy had been cruising ever higher on the artificial sugar rush of ever higher debt, which would one day end in a cataclysm and far worse than the current market selloff, which is why until now everyone was only talking about fixing the problem – Trump is the first one to actually do something about it. And sure, it will be extremely painful, and it remains to be seen if Trump can even hold the course.
Dimon’s letter marks Dimon’s first public commentary on the measures since they were announced. Days after Trump won the US presidential election last year, Dimon said the future president’s tariff threats would “get people to the table” and that he hoped it would be “done wisely.”
Dimon refrained from mentioning Trump directly in the letter. The CEO, 69, has run JPMorgan for nearly 20 years, building it into the largest US bank and becoming the industry’s elder statesman along the way. His annual letters are wide-ranging and closely followed, and this year’s missive stretches to nearly 60 pages, including footnotes.
JPMorgan, which is set to report first-quarter earnings this week, notched the highest annual profit in the history of American banking in 2024 — besting its own record from the prior year.
In addition to addressing tariffs, Dimon wrote about America’s economic alliances more broadly. The US derives strength from its military and economic ties, and maintaining these relationships is essential to avoid the kind of weakening and fragmentation its adversaries would seize upon, he wrote.
Dimon warned against a “false sense of security” that oppressive nations won’t use their military and economic powers to advance their goals, particularly against perceived weak or disorganized Western democracies.
The CEO called for reforms that fortify international systems and institutions like NATO, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. He urged European leaders to make economic reforms and boost military spending to help strengthen ties. As for the “complex relationship” between the US and China, the latter would be “better off” forming partnerships with a strong Western world than with nations like Russia and Iran, he wrote.
“America First is fine, as long as it doesn’t end up being America alone,” Dimon wrote. He added that America’s global leadership role is being challenged not just by other nations but also from within the country by its “polarized electorate.”
And as expected, the CEO weighed in on the state of the economy, noting it was already weakening when he began writing his letter — which was before Trump announced his tariff plans. Dimon reiterated his concerns about persistent inflation thanks to the high fiscal deficit, ongoing wars, the need for infrastructure investment in addition to the recasting of global trade and tariffs. How these things play out will impact interest rates, he said.
“The slower the growth, the lower the interest rates, and the higher the inflation, the higher the interest rates,” he said.
Other highlights from the letter, courtesy of Bloomberg:
- On JPMorgan’s excess capital: “After reading the first section of this letter about the state of the world and the many risks facing the global economy, we hope you can see why we also believe that now is a good time to retain lots of extra capital and liquidity.”
- As he has done in the past, Dimon called for an elimination of the US debt ceiling. He wrote that it is “essentially a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ that can be misused by politicians who don’t understand the damage it can do.”
- In his letter last year, Dimon defended the bank’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies but said that the firm would comply with evolving laws. This year, he wrote: “While we have modified our approach to certain corporate responsibilities to conform to new guidance, we remain committed to reaching out to all communities in an effort to create a stronger, more inclusive economy.”
- Dimon also took aim at bureaucracy, complacency and the “BS” which he said kills companies and invited staff to send him an email highlighting “bureaucratic stuff we do”. In February, Dimon made some candid remarks about inefficiency and remote work at an internal townhall event.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.