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“At the start of the year, I think it was sort of an article of faith that the U.S. was easily going to cruise faster than Canada,” Porter said. “And, realistically, there’s next to no difference between the Canadian growth outlook and the U.S. growth outlook over the next year. And I think that is a big story.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve broke out of its holding pattern on interest rates in December of last year, raising its trendsetting lending level by 25 basis points to a range of 0.5-0.75 per cent — the first move since 2008.

Originally, the Fed’s plan was to gradually move its rate up four times in 2016. More recently, U.S. policymakers appear to have pared their trajectory back to perhaps two hikes this year, but even those moves now look questionable as the economy slows. In the fourth quarter of 2015, the U.S. economy expanded by just1.4 per cent — not enough to create the number of new positions to continue lowering the the country’s jobless rate, one of the Fed’s key policy targets.

The International Monetary Fund this week lowered its U.S. growth forecast for 2016to 2.4 per cent from 2.6 per cent. In 2017, the IMF cut its outlook to 2.5 per cent from 2.6 per cent. The Washington-based agency also downgraded its Canadian forecast for this year to 1.5 per cent from 1.7 per cent, and said growth in 2017 could come in at 1.9 per cent, rather than a previous projection of 2.1 per cent.

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday increased this country’s growth projections, saying the economy is now expected to rise by 1.7 per cent this year, up from 1.4 per cent in its January forecast. Growth in 2017 was revised down to 2.3 per cent from 2.4 per cent.