“HOW DO YOU GET ANYONE TO INVEST IN 
ANYTHING WHEN YOU HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO 
KEEPS CHANGING THE PLAYING FIELD?”
- ALEX CARRICK
BUILDERSDIGEST   Quarter 1  2026   29
THE CANADIAN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTION PART 2
Tom Cooney, international policy advisor 
with the investment advisory firm Capital 
Group, suggests that the tariff “wall” 
will most likely be “reconstructed with 
alternative materials,” beginning with a 
15-per-cent blanket global tariff.
THE TRUMP EFFECT
“If you compare the Canadian economy, 
which has been very flat, to the U.S. 
economy, which is enjoying real growth, it 
paints kind of an ugly picture,” says TCA 
president and CEO John Mollenhauer. 
“There’s much to be done before we 
see real economic recovery. There are 
so many things going on that disrupt the 
traditional supply-and-demand cycle that 
forecasting is very, very difficult.”
On the positive side, “one thing that 
Trump has done is galvanize Canadians 
into thinking that we have to start to 
defend out own interests,” says Alex 
Carrick, former chief economist  
with ConstructConnect.
Carrick identifies tariffs and the state of 
the housing sector as the two primary – 
and intersecting – challenges. “How do 
you get anyone to invest in anything when 
you have a president who keeps changing 
the playing field? When you don’t know 
With a presence in more than 40 countries around 
the world, we speak to the needs of our Construction 
legal services for the full project lifecycle to 
businesses where they are based and where they 
build, across all borders and practice areas.
Building Trust
To learn more, please contact
Howard Krupat, Partner,
at howard.krupat@ca.dlapiper.com
dlapiper.com
Robert Thompson, Senior Vice President 
robertt@mediaedge.ca   647-494-4229
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