Thank you very much for your question.
Let me say two words on the U.S. first. In the MPR, as I think members know, there is an analysis of this household debt situation that looks specifically at the scale of wealth that U.S. households would need to rebuild. There's a technical box in here, but it gives one a sense of the length of time it's going to take for the households to return to something approaching the levels of wealth they had prior to the crisis—not to the peak prior to the crisis, but something approaching average levels of wealth.
That dynamic, as you suggested with the quote, is going to mean, in our opinion, that the U.S. economy will be more like a 2% growth per year economy than a 3% or 3.5% growth per year economy, the type that Canadian businesses and Canadians have been familiar with virtually all of our working lives. Over time that is a big difference.
To simplify things, we've been making the point that while the U.S. is a large market, it is more of a market-share game to export into the United States. You have to look to grow market share as opposed to participating in the growing pie, if you will. That's possible but that's probably not the best alternative. As you also note, if one looks at the major emerging economies, the growth rate in these economies--in high single digits in real terms, and mid double digits of 13% to 15% in nominal terms--means there is tremendous opportunity. We are under-represented in those markets. They not only account for one-half of the growth in all imports, but emerging markets today also account for one-half of all capital good imports, full stop, to give a sense of the scale of the adjustment there. So there is a big opportunity.
The BRIC countries' share of our overall exports has actually been halved in about the last 10 years.
So when we meet in this backdrop of uncertainty in Europe and the ongoing issues in the United States, we can look at the advantages this economy has and where we are under-represented, which is in major emerging markets, and where the true growth opportunities are going to be for the next five to ten years. And the perspective of the bank--and, of course, we have the luxury of being at a very high level--is that those are the best opportunities, on the whole, for Canadian business.
Now what does that mean? It means that in order to realize them, to the extent to which there can be bilateral, multilateral, or regional trade and technology deals that would open up opportunities for Canadian business, they should be pursued. There are other considerations, but they should be pursued.
There is a need for a degree of reciprocity in this process, which means not just inbound trade liberalization but also foreign investment liberalization, because that goes hand-in-hand.
I'd better stop there, given the time.