JPMorgan investment strategy boss bullish on US despite tariffs, debt, Fed

At least that’s according to JPMorgan’s U.S. head of investment strategy, Jacob Manoukian, who tells Fortune he will be paying little attention to calls of ‘sell America.’

Earlier this year investors may have been tempted to shift their cash out of the U.S. in the face of market volatility arising out of tariff policy and questions about economic fundamentals—most notably federal and government debt.

Investors may have gone in search of safe havens—in gold or perhaps even the Euro or yen—only to watch a matter of months later markets right themselves with the S&P 500 charting 7% up for the year to date.

Concerns that the U.S. may lose its seat at the head of the economic table can largely be dismissed, Manoukian tells Fortune in an exclusive interview this week.

At the peak of what he calls “tariff tantrum” or “tariff panic” he said there were many voices that didn’t like the “direction of travel” in the U.S. Their concern was that an expanding deficit, business-unfriendly tariffs, and chaotic policymaking created a difficult environment for businesses.

The take of these bears was that they had become over-reliant on U.S. assets in recent years and needed to rebalance—they called on investors to sell America.

“We completely disagree with that notion,” Manoukian said. “There’s cyclical reasons to think that the U.S. dollar can continue to depreciate against major trading partners, but we completely disagree with the idea that the U.S. is somehow losing its position as the center of the financial universe. 

“Throughout history there have been periods where the U.S. system—I’ll define it as this alignment of institutions, law, culture, and the innovation cycle—to propel capital market returns and to protect shareholders has been continuously tested. Over time it evolves and hardens and becomes stronger. 

“That’s very different than the kind of system, institutional decisions, political decisions and cultural DNA that exists in other places in the world.”

He continued: “Whether you’re worried about what the current White House is doing or a snap back in the next election cycle to the opposite end of the political spectrum, there’s a reason why we can feel comfortable telling our clients that politics don’t matter as much to market returns, and it’s because [of] what runs deeper than the fleeting election cycles.”

This is also the rationale Manoukian shares with clients asking day in, day out, about America’s $36.2 trillion national debt burden—thrown into sharper focus because of fears President Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ may push it even higher. It’s a notion even pushed by former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk, who said the bill would undo all the efficiency work he had undertaken in the White House.

Manoukian said: “Probably every client I speak with asks about the federal debt and deficit. It is top of mind for everybody, but … if you’re actually looking at the U.S. like a credit underwriter, which is what you have to do when you participate in treasury markets: It’s the largest economy in the world, it has the most vibrant innovation cycle relative to other OECD countries, it has actually pretty low tax collections as a percentage of GDP, it’s the world’s reserve currency, its external debt share is actually relatively low, and it borrows in its own currency.”  

The Fed question

Manoukian isn’t alone on his optimism about continued upsides in the market. Goldman Sachs sees the S&P 500 hitting near-7000 next year, up 11% based on expectations of a normalized Fed rate.

While markets are generally pricing in cuts from the current rate of 4.25 to 4.5%, President Trump is convinced that the Federal Open Market Committee needs to go further, faster. Trump has even suggested cutting rates to below 1%, representing more than a 70% drop.

While analysts are to some extent confident about a cut, the need for an independent bank is one of the fundamental systems that give Manoukian such hope for the future of the U.S. economic brand.

“Part of what Treasury and the White House want is … a regeneration of borrowing from the private sector and from households so that the government doesn’t have to borrow as much money to generate economic growth,” Manoukian said. “To do that, they need lower long-term interest rates.

“What the market is arguing is that a credible Fed that can operate independently is a really good thing for long-term borrowing costs. But where it connects back to this thesis that we have, is that the Fed is at the heart of this institutional argument [about what] the U.S. has that’s different than other places.”

He added that the Fed falling into and out of political vogue in the past has only made the argument for central bank independence clearer, using the example of President Nixon and Arthur Burns as one example.

“What happened is the Fed evolved after that to become a much more independent institution that wasn’t as beholden to the White House,” Manoukian added. “Even the way that the board is structured and the way that the governor’s terms are out of sync with the political cycle and, the fact it still has a chair but a board where every vote counts.

“So that’s another area where I think there’s just a little bit too much consternation from the marketplace about an erosion of of institutional credibility.”