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More Clarity, for the Time Being… : Scotiabank’s Forecast Tables
7/26/2024
From Scotiabank
- Further rate cuts in Canada this year a certainty while we continue to believe that the Federal Reserve will cut in September.
- Economic data have come in largely as expected so our forecasts remain largely unchanged. Lower interest rates will provide a mild boost to economic growth later this year, but the full impact of rate cuts will take time to materialize given the lags of monetary policy.
- Clarity on interest rates and the outlook over the next few months may be fleeting. The results of the US election risk muddying the outlook substantially.
The long-awaited rate cuts are finally underway in Canada and are likely to start in the United States in September. These will eventually provide relief to the interest rate sensitive parts of the economy and may also lift business and household sentiment. These rate cuts are occurring in the context of slow, but still-positive growth, and solid progress on inflation management even though there remain substantial risks of higher inflation (linked to the sharp rise in global shipping costs and rapid wage growth and low productivity in Canada). We remain comfortable with our view that policy rates will fall by another 75 basis points in Canada this year and that the Federal Reserve will cut its policy rate by at least 50 basis points starting in September. Moreover, economic data have come in roughly as expected over the last several months, leading to only minor tweaks to the outlook for growth. All told, this forecast update is largely similar to our previous forecast. In this sense, the stability in our forecast combined with more certainty on the interest rate path suggest greater clarity in the outlook for the next several months.