Mallender Insights

Hello everyone, Welcome to Economic Impact. Today is Feb 11th, 2025 and as usual I am with our chief Economist Stéfane Marion. Stéfane, surprisingly once again, assets are doing well.

All the countries that are in the crosshairs of the US President of Washington on a tariff war are out actually outperforming the S&P 500. But more tellingly, Denis, all-asset classes are up this year so far this year. And as I said, might be surprising to see a stock market behaving so well outside the US on the premise that we understand that there's a global trade war. But whether it will be as punitive as what we think for the global economy is not the baseline scenario at this point in time. So, the market is thinking otherwise versus what the president is saying at this point in time.

At this stage, it seems that Europe and Asia are not too concerned.

Exactly. I mean, again, these are the countries that are facing the biggest threat of US tariffs right now. And yet the market's saying it will be too punitive for the US to proceed with a 25%. Doesn't mean there won't be any tariffs, Denis, but 25% tariffs will be too punitive on US inflation. Therefore, they're not, markets are not buying it right now. I think it's interesting to look at this this way, market expectations. But again, let's not be complacent because you know, something might still happen in the next few years.

Surprisingly, in Canada, we see up 3.1%. But it's not all sectors. In fact, it's only two.

That's the point, because just the sheer threat of these tariffs is fragilizing the Canadian economy. In case in point, most sectors are not behaving so well year to date. But the sector that's carrying the TSX, actually there's two. Well, you know, technology, but that's a small component of the S&P TSX, but mostly it's the materials sector up 13% year to date, really enabling the Canadian stock market to outperform the US, for example.

And with the uncertainty, there's gold and there's materials and gold is in a new high.

Well, if you're going to look at materials, you cannot not speak to gold prices because we're a big producer and that's a large chunk of the S&P TSX and gold price is that new all-time high. In nominal terms, $2900 or so U.S. dollars. Adjusted for inflation, you go back more than 50 years and it's a new all-time high. So, basically some components of financial markets saying while you were not so sure about this tariff war and the way to protect myself is to buy a tangible asset and one of them would be gold. There's probably still upside for that.

And in history gold has been, you know, a safe haven against inflation.

It could be a safe haven against U.S. dollar depreciation, but the US dollar is a new all-time high. But you're absolutely right against inflation. Gold is looking at inflation expectations right now. And this is a poll made at the consumer level and say, Denis, what do you think inflation might be a year from now? It actually has surged more than 100 basis points in the past month or so. And people saying, you know, it might be 4%, Denis, I'm telling you, if we have 4% inflation, there's no way that the Federal Reserve can ease monetary policy. So, this is why gold price is saying if you want to be aggressive on a tariff war, a global tariff war, we might keep you in check because inflation is going to be going to be higher.

Yeah. And at the same time, you know, we have rates staying pretty high in the states and the stock market doesn't go down. Then we have that, you know, what we call the first-time negative equity premium that we haven't seen for a long, long period of time, almost 20 years.

Yeah. So, if you're an investor, you say if I'm willing to take the risk to invest in the stock market, there's a there's a premium I'm willing to cope with. But if at some point the equity risk premium turns negative, that means I'm not necessarily compensated to take that type of risk in the stock market not knowing what whatever tariff war will unfold or not versus what I get to invest in something perceived to be safer. 10 year treasury yield. This is the first negative equity risk premium in a generation. That's a generation. So, this is why the stock market is vulnerable to this global tariff war. This is why we said last month that we don't think 25% users baseline scenario. We know there will be some tariffs on China. Right now, there are some, but whether they can be aggressive, or Washington can be aggressive remains to be seen without fragilizing the stock market and creating a negative wealth effect for US consumers.

And back in Canada, there's a big concern. Uncertainty is at the highest level that we haven't seen.

The Canadian economy is fragilizing. You're absolutely right. We saw it in some certain industries of the S&P TSX that we showed previously. But at the same time, if you want to go put a number on it, if you look at the index of policy, economic policy uncertainty, record high. So, it doesn't matter that we've signed free trade agreements with more than fifty countries. Corporations right now don't know how to manage their business plan because we don't know if these tariffs threats will unfold or not. That we saw this week a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel. That would be a big impact on the Canadian economy. But the tariffs are not to be applied. well, might come into effect on March 4. So we'll see what happens over the next three weeks. But clearly, you are fragilizing the Canadian economy right now with tariff uncertainty. You don't need to have the tariffs in place. The uncertainty itself is fragilizing the Canadian economy.

Yeah. And investors in those new factories and, you know, and so on. They're frozen right now. They won't do anything.

You're going to get weak investment and therefore probably weak economic activity in the first half of 2025.

That's why we need the government to be in place and put, you know, stuff that will help those industries to invest and keep the economy going, you know, up and working despite the fact what's going on South of the border.

I think there are discussions on that. Remember when we spoke to interprovincial trade barriers. Now there's more talk about this. People are talking about, you know, energy security is very important for economic sovereignty. So, we're saying, you know, a big change. We could actually aspire to policies that will be, you know, positive for the Canadian economy in the second half of 2025. The first half will be shaky, but the second half, in the meantime, what it means, Denis, is that the Bank of Canada is forced to be more aggressive on monetary policies in which they mentioned just a week ago when they ease monetary policy.

And with that uncertainty, you know, the Loonie the Canadian dollar keeps going down.

Well, since the Bank of Canada is saying that, you know, this uncertainty is fragilizing the Canadian economy. So, they're opening the door to further rate cuts. Therefore, the interest rate differential is driving the value of the Canadian dollar, which early in February when we thought that the tariffs would be imposed at the beginning of this month, it's been delayed till March, Canadian dollars went to 147, came back to 143 where we stand right now. But again, you can't forecast an appreciating dollar until we have a better visibility on tariffs or not. But at the same time, having visibility on Canadian policies will be very important to support the currency. And Denis, you know what, we want to put a positive spin on that. We believe that what's going to happen in the second half of this year should be more positive for the Canadian economy, but there's still a few weeks of uncertainty to cope with.

Well, we'll keep the positivism of your comments and thank you once again. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back early March. Thank you. Have a good day.

Hello everyone and welcome to Economic Impact. Today is January 22nd, 2025 and as usual, I am with our Chief Economist, Stéfane Marion. Hello Stéfane.

Hi Denis.

Well, we have a lot of noise on the market so far this year and as usual can we have a look at how the market performed so far?

It's a complicated world, Denis, and sometimes you have to look at what the market is saying. And at this juncture, many people might be surprised from the fact that, you know, equity markets are actually positive year to date. And maybe except for Japan and emerging Asia, which is, you know, down very slightly. It might surprise many people to say that despite all the political noise and the tariff threats, the markets saying, well, we're not sure that's the baseline scenario where the US president would come in very forcefully and put us in a situation where we have a global tariff war. So, so far, so good. Of course, it's early in the year, but it might surprise many people to see that the markets are important.

And because of what's going on today, the presentation will be a bit different. We need to talk about, you know, the trade balance, tariff and so on and so forth. But if we start with the trade balance.

I think we want to be very clear to like, we don't know what the full answer is right now. So maybe we'll find, you know, potential solutions for Canada to deal with this uncertainty that we face right now. Now what is clear that we know from Washington is the president is annoyed with the US trade balance, which is very much, it's significant trade deficit with the entire world, 3% of GDP. Denis, it's been a long time since the US actually saw a trade surplus.

And when you compare those tariffs from where they were many, many years ago, where do we sit?

It's very low and the president will say we are tariff structure is very low, but your deficit is very large. So either you want to bring that to surplus, then your tariff structure is going to have to be very high. So, what the president is talking about is going for a tariff structure that's roughly 2% right now to something that will be equivalent to something much more punitive sometimes that we see, you know, double digit tariffs that we saw 100 years ago. But keep in mind, Denis, that back then the import content of US consumption was much smaller. Nowadays for every dollar consumed in the US, about 12 cents comes from imports. So if you want to put 25% tariffs on 12% of consumption, well, you know what it means on inflation, 2 percentage point higher, that would bring inflation closer to 5%. I don't think that's palatable for the president and I'm not sure it's palatable for the bond market.

And if we just turn back a bit to performance and instead of the stock market going to the bond market, the bond market is reacting quite differently this time around. And it's probably because of all of the uncertainty that's in the air.

So, that's why I say, we can't say for sure what the scenario will be for the balance of the year. Clearly the stock market is saying, well, I don't see much chance in a big tariff structure or a very aggressive one. But the bond market is saying, well, I'm going to give you something you've never seen and that's a 10-year treasury yield that's–

Which one is right? The bond trader or the stock trader.

We will find out in the next few months. That's why we've been telling clients, well, be careful because there's no certainty in this type of world. But I think there is something to be said to that the president is not comfortable with the 10-year treasury yield moving higher by 100 basis point since the Fed started easing interest rates. Because that what it means, Denis, is that the mortgage rates are rising in the US. So a lot of people wanted to refinance their homes and say, well, the Fed is easing. I'm going to get a cheaper rate. But you're not getting a cheaper rate because the bond market for the first time in over a generation is saying “Hey, if you're too aggressive on tariffs, there's going to be more inflation and rates will go higher”. So I think this is what the president will be keeping an eye on. And this is why there's no certainty on how we can go with the 25% tariff without hitting the US economy negatively on long term rates.

Let's come back to the, you know, the commercial balance and can we explain how does it look Canada versus what Mr. Trump is saying?

So what I showed to the bond market and what's happening in equities saying, well, I don't think he can be overly aggressive without jeopardizing economic growth in the US. But from a Canadian perspective, clearly we need to find a better response to how we approach Americans. There's no, you know, having a free trade agreement is not a given, right, right. So we need to maintain good relationships with, with the US and US saying, well, I'm subsidizing you dramatically with trade on USMCA, to which I reply: listen it is true that the Americans have a slight, you know, trade deficit with us, but it's only $32 billion.

If you put things in perspective, the 32 billion versus the whole commercial deficit in the state, it's pretty small.

Well, let's put in a number. The Americans have one thousand billion dollars, so 1 trillion in terms of deficit, but with Canada 32 billion.

Its peanuts.

3% yeah, exactly not much. And of that 3%, Denis, it's all oil and gas because the Americans actually for since 2008 are actually running a surplus outside oil. So even in terms of the balance on motor vehicles, the Americans are running a surplus. Yeah. So again, this is where we need to be very good at explaining to Americans, listen, the deficit is really oil and gas.

And they want that.

They need it because without us they wouldn't have a surplus on energy exports because they can refine the crude oil that we sell them and sell it and transform gasoline, which–

And if I recall correctly, the one that because they want to have a fair sources of gas coming from Canada instead of other country that they're not that close.

We are a de facto strategic petroleum reserve for them. You're absolutely right. And the reason for that is because we now export. So the US imports 62% of the oil from Canada via pipeline, which is quite from a national security standpoint, which is quite attractive from their standpoint. So that's why, I mean, I'm not saying it won't happen for sure, but it would be, it is unlikely that the Americans would put a 25% tariff structure on oil and gas, which they need to main keep their inflation lower.

OK, let's get very clear. If they put a 25% everywhere, how does that affect the GDP?

No one wins. OK, but from a Canadian perspective, since you're asking, it would be quite ugly. It would be a GDP drawdown, or let's call it a recession, 6 percentage point, which would be the largest recession since the 1980s when interest rates were 20% in Canada. So the point, Denis, is this is the extreme case where there's a 25% tariff on everyone and there's retaliation. Obviously we're a small open economy. Even our energy would be taxed. Then we would have a problem. But again, Denis, that's not our baseline scenario. But you wanted me to give you the extreme case. This is the extreme case that we would contend with.

That's big.

It's big, but obviously the market is not pricing. But this is if you want the extreme scenario.

Those are numbers.

Bank of Canada numbers by the way, not mine.

OK, now we can shift a little bit to the industrial sector in Canada compared to the other countries where we're not at par.

Well, here's the challenge. The politicians are saying, OK, the Americans we need to diversify our export sources, but unless we want to sell them energy and it's very hard to do because our energy goes to us via pipelines. There's no real pipeline going east-west. So if we're gonna sell stuff–

We can’t put that in boxes.

Exactly. But what we can put in boxes are the widgets that are produced by our manufacturing sector. God knows we could do better there because what we've done over the past year is, we haven't been paying attention to our manufacturing sector. We were too obsessed and moving production elsewhere. Basically we were saying, oh, let's move or production elsewhere; will be less pollution in Canada. I get that it works, because manufacturing is very energy intensive, but if production moves elsewhere and forms of energy used to produce the manufacturing are more polluting in Canada, the planet doesn't win. Now I'm not happy that we now boast to have the smallest manufacturing sector in the G7 despite the fact that we have a comparative advantage on electricity prices and natural gas which are critical for the manufacturing production process.

That was one of your battles for the past year or so that we underinvested in our industries. We thought that everything can be digital nowadays. But you know, if trade is not so secured, whether southern partner, we need to have a critical base in manufacturing. There's a critical mass that we must keep in this country. And this is where I think that this is part of the solution. Let's say, well, OK, fine, the Americans don't want to. Let's, let's build a relationship where we sell within Canada on a higher proportion than what we're doing right now.

And last but not least, you want to bring us on another thinking about tariff, but tariff between provinces that are not really tariffs.

So what concerns me is that we're saying it's not fair that the Americans want to put a 25% tariff structure on us. But since you're asking, Denis, the tariff equivalent of the trade barriers that we have between us, between the provinces in this country is a whopping 21%. When you think about it–

Do people know that?

People are not paying attention. There is a way to take those into interprovincial barriers and put them in a terrific equivalent one, 21%.

You're telling me that we are as protective between us then the Americans wants between the Canada.

You know, Americans want to put 25%. We have 21% on ourselves. And that's not normal. And that's a way where I say, OK, maybe it's frustrating for producers not to have the visibility that they want to have with the Americans. But here's the thing, I can get rid of this almost overnight and say, hey, you know what, we can increase interprovincial trade that is only 40% of our production, maybe to back to 50% where it was before the free trade agreement. So, you know, it's all not doom and gloom. If you think about it, it's an opportunity that comes only once in a generation where all the Premiers sit down and you say enough with this, that's gone and we can actually provide visibility to our producers and keep a critical mass on manufacturing. So again, Denis, yes, it's annoying, yes there's lack of visibility, not sure what the market is pricing at this point in time, but not pricing the end of the world for sure. But from a Canadian perspective, this is probably the most important chart of the presentation. Please, let's get rid of this.

Well, on that Stefane, thank you very much. Thank you for that very special presentation. Hopefully it helped you. Hopefully it was constructive and we'll see you next month in February.