And a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) report released this week indicated that Trump’s tariffs have left the overall North American economic outlook largely unchanged, with over 90% of Canadian exports shielded from levies because they’re CUSMA-compliant.
Still, the tariffs – and the continuing economic uncertainty they’ve generated – are weighing against the homebuilding outlook in Canada, particularly Ontario, the Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) chief executive officer Kevin Lee told Canadian Mortgage Professional.
Ontario shed 38,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2025 as tariffs bit into the province’s industrial base, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) said, while its unemployment rate rose for the ninth quarter in a row and jumped to 7.8%.
But for now, Carney’s olive branch to Trump likely avoids a further ramping-up of tensions between the two countries, which Scotiabank analyst Patrick Perrier described as one of the biggest threats to the Canadian housing market’s current slow recovery.
Meanwhile, remarks by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Friday indicated the US central bank is ready to bring rates lower and put some downward pressure on five-year Government of Canada bond yields, which strongly influence Canadian mortgage rates.