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“Most of the issues that we’re dealing with today are induced by bad political choices,” Smith said, citing Trump’s import tariffs and the retaliatory measures they provoked.

BlackRock Inc., the New York-based asset manager with a portfolio of more than $6 trillion, says the U.S. could tip into recession as soon as 2020. That’s disconcerting because America is currently the only major economy that still is performing well.

Most of the issues that we’re dealing with today are induced by bad political choices Fred Smith, FedEx chief executive

Canada may avoid a downturn, although at the price of being condemned to muddling along, much like Japan and some of the bigger European economies. Weak oil prices and excessive private and public debt could stall the engines that powered the economy clear of the Great Recession. If the trade wars persist, exports also will suffer, threatening stagnation.

“Growth will be shallow and corrections will be shallow,” Aubrey Badeo, BlackRock’s Toronto-based head of Canadian fixed income, said in an interview. “A Japan situation could be something we gravitate towards here.”

We’re not there yet.

Most forecasts predict the economy will grow by around 1.5 per cent next year, roughly equivalent to the Bank of Canada’s non-inflationary speed limit. “Plans to increase investment and employment, often supported by sales expectations, are widespread, especially in the services sector,” the central bank says in itslatest quarterly Business Outlook Survey(BOS), released Friday.

Companies added about 220,000 jobs over the 12 months through November, around the annual average since 2010, and the unemployment rate has been no higher than six per cent since October 2017, by far the most impressive stretch in data that dates to 1976. Hiring is a lagging indicator, butone that says a lot about an economy’s underlying strength. By that measure, Canada is fine: There is a reason the Bank of Canada felt the need to raise its benchmark interest rate five times from July 2017 to October 2018.