JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon didn’t mince words during his speech at Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, sounding alarm bells over Europe’s waning global economic clout and warning that complacency is setting in across global markets in the face of rising U.S. protectionism.

“You’re losing,” Dimon told officials in Dublin on Thursday, as reported by the Financial Times, pointing to Europe’s sharp economic divergence from the United States over the last decade and a half. “Europe has gone from 90% [of] U.S. GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good.”

He attributed this decline to the continent’s failure to complete its single market ambitions and to consolidate its banking, fiscal, and capital market systems.

“We’ve got this huge, strong market and our companies are big and successful, have huge kinds of scale that are global. You have that, but less and less,” he said.

“Everything Should Be a Single Market”

Dimon emphasized the need for deeper European integration. Speaking to the Irish Examiner, he argued that “everything should be a single market” — including banking, regulation, transparency, and climate disclosure — if Europe hopes to compete with the scale and efficiency of the United States and China.

His remarks underscore long-standing frustrations among European policymakers who have repeatedly pushed for the bloc to eliminate internal trade barriers, harmonize corporate tax policies, and finalize banking and capital markets union — all of which remain incomplete decades after the eurozone’s formation.

Europe’s fragmented regulatory regimes, inconsistent tax codes, and sluggish policy execution have long been cited as obstacles to private investment. And in an increasingly multipolar world marked by geopolitical rivalry and economic nationalism, Europe’s vulnerabilities have become even more pronounced.

Dimon’s speech also touched on the continent’s loss of sovereignty in key sectors — from critical minerals to energy, satellite communications, and digital infrastructure — areas where China and the U.S. have made aggressive strategic plays.

Markets Shrug Off Trump’s Tariffs — For Now

Dimon also warned of another storm brewing: global financial markets appear dangerously indifferent to the inflationary risks posed by President Donald Trump’s new wave of tariffs, which include a 50% levy on Brazilian imports, a 50% tariff on copper, and a potential 200% duty on pharmaceuticals.

Despite the scale and scope of these trade barriers, U.S. stocks surged on Thursday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hitting record highs, driven by a bullish outlook on earnings and optimism around Federal Reserve rate cuts.

But Dimon is unconvinced.

“There is currently complacency in the markets,” he said, adding that investors have become “a little desensitized” to tariff announcements and are underestimating the threat they pose to inflation and interest rates.

According to Dimon, the chances of the Fed raising rates again are far greater than the market currently believes.

“The market is pricing a 20% chance [of a rate hike], I would price in a 40-50% chance. I would put that as a cause for concern,” he said.

His warning echoed earlier remarks from last month, where he cautioned that the U.S. economy is showing signs of softening and may face a downturn in the coming months, particularly if inflation flares up again.

Europe at a Crossroads

Although investor sentiment toward Europe has turned more positive in 2025 — thanks to Germany’s proposed fiscal stimulus, rising defense budgets, and a period of relative political stability — the region’s long-term competitiveness remains in question.

Private equity and institutional investors have begun eyeing value plays across the eurozone, viewing it as a hedge against the White House’s erratic policy swings. But as Dimon points out, temporary market performance is no substitute for structural reform.

The EU’s inability to finalize a tariff agreement with the U.S. further clouds the outlook. With Washington doubling down on protectionism and China investing heavily in industrial self-sufficiency, the EU now finds itself at a strategic inflection point — caught between two superpowers and at risk of becoming economically peripheral.

Dimon’s Verdict: Wake-Up Call for Brussels

Dimon’s comments are not merely a rebuke; they are a challenge to European leaders to act with urgency. For too long, Europe’s economic architecture has remained incomplete — unable to match the scale and agility of its global peers.

Now, with Trump’s tariffs threatening global trade flows, inflation risks returning to the spotlight, and the continent’s energy and tech dependencies more visible than ever, the time for half-measures may be over.

The message from Wall Street’s most powerful banker is unambiguous: Europe must finish what it started or risk becoming a geopolitical spectator in a world increasingly defined by speed, scale, and strategy.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Bayo Ojulari, has stated that the sale of the country’s non-performing refineries, including those in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna, remains a possibility as the company undertakes a comprehensive review of its downstream operations.

Ojulari made this known in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the 9th Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) International Seminar in Vienna on Thursday. According to him, despite significant investments and technological interventions in the past, the refineries have proven more complicated to revive than previously anticipated.

“We’ve made quite a lot of investments in our refineries over the last several years and brought in a lot of technology. We’ve been challenged – some of those technologies have not worked as expected so far,” he said. “When you are refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we found is that they are a little bit more complicated.”

He added that a full review of NNPCL’s refining strategy would be concluded before the end of 2025 and that all options—including outright sale—remain on the table.

“Sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table. But that decision will be based on the outcome of the review,” he added.

Mounting Pressure for Privatization

Ojulari’s comments come at a time when pressure is intensifying for the government to permanently exit refinery ownership. Earlier this month, the Director-General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadiri, urged the Federal Government to fully privatize the state-owned refineries, which he described as “symbols of waste, inefficiency, and entrenched mismanagement.”

“Those four refineries are a pure drain on the Nigerian economy, and it is not fair to the Nigerian people,” Ajayi-Kadiri said. “The government should just sell these refineries. Give them to private sector people who will run them efficiently and be able to deliver. When something belongs to everybody, it belongs to nobody.”

His remarks echoed the widespread frustration over the decades of failed promises to revive the facilities. Over the years, the government has poured more than $3 billion into the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries without delivering any meaningful output.

In 2021 alone, the Port Harcourt refinery was awarded a $1.5 billion rehabilitation contract, while an additional $1.48 billion was earmarked for Warri and Kaduna refineries. That same year, NNPC confirmed it had spent over N100 billion on repairs, despite the fact that the refineries refined zero barrels of crude.

The refineries have remained inactive for years, even as Nigeria—Africa’s top oil producer—continues to rely almost entirely on imported petroleum products, spending billions in scarce foreign exchange and subjecting consumers to endless cycles of fuel scarcity.

“We are the sixth-largest producer of crude oil in the world, yet we suffer,” Ajayi-Kadiri said. “If you completely go private, it will be difficult for anyone to steal. It will be difficult to be unaccountable.”

New Approach to Pipeline Security

In the same interview, Ojulari highlighted the NNPCL’s revamped approach to oil infrastructure security. He said the company now works directly with host communities and local vigilante groups, in partnership with state security forces, to protect oil pipelines.

“It wasn’t a quick fix. It took several years to get the government’s policies aligned. But what we have now is more sustainable,” he said. “Security is now driven by the communities, far more than what we had before.”

Crude Supply to Dangote Refinery to Remain Commercial

Ojulari also addressed concerns about supplying crude to the Dangote Refinery, stressing that there would be no government compulsion in the arrangement.

“First of all, Dangote refinery is a commercial investment, not a national one. It has the flexibility to import crude for its survival and also has the flexibility to serve all customers,” he said. “So, if Nigeria is going to supply more crude to the Dangote refinery, it will be on a commercially willing buyer, willing seller basis—not because it is a policy.”

Nigeria Targets 1.9mbpd by End of 2025

Ojulari revealed that Nigeria is ramping up production efforts, with a goal to hit 2.06 million barrels per day by 2027. As of March, production stood at 1.56 million barrels per day; it now hovers around 1.63 million, including condensates. He projected an increase to 1.9 million barrels per day by the end of 2025.

On gas, he disclosed that Nigeria plans to grow output from 7 billion cubic feet to 10 billion cubic feet per day by 2027.

Why This Matters

The NNPCL’s strategic shift comes amid years of public disappointment with its downstream operations, especially the prolonged failure to revive Nigeria’s refineries. With the Dangote Refinery now coming on stream and the government advocating a market-led petroleum industry, many believe the time has come to cut losses and exit refinery ownership entirely.

Ojulari’s remarks signal that such a move may no longer be off the table—though Nigerians remain skeptical, having heard similar promises before. Whether the latest review leads to real reform or simply another cycle of bureaucracy remains to be seen.

Once the undisputed king of semiconductors, Intel now finds itself in a moment of crisis—one marked by stagnant innovation, lost market share, and internal reckonings.

In a leaked internal Q&A with employees this week, new CEO Lip-Bu Tan offered a rare, sobering assessment: “We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies anymore.”

That candid statement, first reported by OregonTech, puts into sharp relief what many in the industry have already suspected: Intel is no longer a leader, but a legacy player struggling to find its footing in a hyper-competitive chip ecosystem dominated by rivals like Nvidia, AMD, Apple, TSMC, and Samsung.

Tan’s admission underscores a multi-year unraveling of Intel’s dominance across virtually every sector it once controlled—desktop CPUs, data center processors, GPUs, fabrication, and even AI hardware.

From Monopoly to Marginalized

Two decades ago, Intel commanded the computing world with x86 CPUs that left little room for competitors. But the company’s rigid reliance on in-house manufacturing and a slow response to emerging technologies allowed competitors like AMD to surge ahead. AMD’s Ryzen and EPYC architectures not only restored competition in consumer PCs and servers—but they also dethroned Intel in key markets.

Today, AMD powers flagship gaming consoles (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X), handheld devices like the Steam Deck, and has grabbed a meaningful chunk of the server CPU market once monopolized by Intel. Meanwhile, Apple’s transition to ARM-based silicon and the rise of AI-focused chipmakers like Nvidia further squeezed Intel’s once-dominant position.

Intel tried to modernize its CPUs with the big.LITTLE hybrid architecture in its recent Arrow Lake chips, mirroring ARM’s design philosophy, but the launch underwhelmed. The architecture failed to reverse AMD’s momentum and barely impacted the market. On the GPU front, the company’s Arc graphics cards came late and lacked the punch to challenge Nvidia or AMD’s dominance.

Manufacturing Missteps and the TSMC Lifeline

Intel’s internal foundries, once a cornerstone of its success, have turned into a liability. Years of delays and poor yields across its advanced nodes—10nm and 7nm especially—forced Intel to outsource key parts of its chip production to TSMC, the same company enabling its rivals’ success.

By 2025, Intel has reportedly outsourced 30% of its chip fabrication to TSMC, including the GPU tiles on Meteor Lake and the compute tiles for Lunar Lake. This strategic pivot—unthinkable for Intel just a few years ago—is an overdue acknowledgment that its foundry division is no longer world-class.

Now, rumors are swirling about Intel splitting its foundry operations into a separate entity, essentially transitioning into a fabless model like AMD, Apple, and Nvidia. If it happens, it would mark one of the most dramatic reversals in the company’s century-long history.

AI Revolution Leaves Intel Behind

While AI has emerged as the defining trend of this generation—supercharged by the global embrace of ChatGPT and large language models—Intel has watched from the sidelines. It failed to capitalize on the early AI wave, ceding virtually the entire training market to Nvidia, whose data center GPUs now power the AI backbone of the modern internet.

“On training, I think it is too late for us,” Tan admitted during the employee meeting.

Instead, he’s pinning Intel’s AI hopes on edge computing and agentic AI—AI systems embedded in consumer and industrial devices capable of acting autonomously without constant cloud access. While these fields are still developing, Tan sees them as Intel’s chance to re-enter the game from a different angle. He promised more AI-focused hires were coming, saying: “Stay tuned. A few more people are coming on board.”

Cuts, Culture Shift, and a Fight for Survival

Intel has already begun aggressive cost-cutting, including thousands of layoffs worldwide. The company reported a $16 billion loss in Q3 2024, largely due to ballooning R&D costs tied to its lagging manufacturing roadmap.

Tan, who replaced Pat Gelsinger last year amid boardroom frustrations, is said to be pursuing a leaner, more focused Intel, ditching the shotgun approach of trying to be everywhere at once.

“Intel’s resurrection has to be a marathon,” Tan reportedly told employees. “We have to be humble. We need to listen to what the market is telling us.”

Perhaps no example better captures Intel’s fall than the fact that it once considered acquiring Nvidia for $20 billion. That was before Nvidia’s meteoric rise. Today, Nvidia’s market capitalization has surpassed $4 trillion, becoming the most valuable publicly traded company in the world—and a titan that defines the AI era.

In contrast, Intel is stuck cleaning up after billions of dollars wasted on refineries, flawed CPU architectures, and missed AI opportunities. Even its once-proud server dominance is gone—EPYC now leads the conversation.

What Does The Future Hold?

With its 18A node still at least a year away and uncertain prospects in AI and servers, Intel’s road to recovery looks steep. The company is no longer the North Star of semiconductors—it’s a challenger in the industry it once built.

Lip-Bu Tan’s honesty may be a refreshing change from years of denial, but rebuilding Intel’s credibility will take more than humility. It will require bold restructuring, laser-focused execution, and a willingness to shed legacy burdens.

Currently, Intel finds itself on the defensive, while its rivals dictate the future of computing. Whether it can reinvent itself as a nimble, AI-focused powerhouse or continue to drift into irrelevance is a question only time—and Tan’s strategy—will answer.