The United States' struggling economy and jobs market is a big concern for Canada, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Thursday, adding that Canadian economic growth likely eased in the second quarter from the first three months of the year.
Canada, this year's chair of the G7 group of industrialised nations, has weathered the global financial crisis better than most of its peers but it is very exposed to a faltering recovery in the United States, which buys most its exports.
"The United States is still struggling, and that's a major worry for the Canadian economy," Flaherty told a business lunch while on a visit to Ireland. He cited weak consumer demand and persistent unemployment as some of the main concerns in the United States.
In Canada, Flaherty said growth in gross domestic product probably moderated in the second quarter of 2010 from the first quarter or in the last three months of 2009.
"That was relatively extraordinary growth (in previous quarters), higher than we had anticipated," he told journalists. "So we do expect as the IMF does, more moderate growth for the balance of this year and into 2011," he added.
Canada is due to release second-quarter GDP data next week.
Asked if worries about the struggling U.S. economy would make him revise plans to exit a stimulus programme, Flaherty said: "We'll just stay on track, complete the economic action plan, it's working."
He added there were also some positive signs in the U.S. economy and developed nations on the whole could look forward to moderate growth in coming years.
"We have to be carefully monitoring ... to make sure we don't slide backwards into any sort of double dip (globally)," he told the lunch after an expose on his own Irish ancestry.
Earlier on Thursday, Flaherty came to Ireland's defence, saying it had a solid bank plan and was Europe's leader in fiscal reform. The views of rating agencies, such as S&P's downgrade of Ireland this week, should not be taken too seriously, he said.
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