Our vulnerabilities remain to the external environment, that's for certain. Our biggest one is that our export outlook is crucial to our getting inflation back to target, and that relies on the U.S. recovery being on all cylinders. If that were to falter so would the rest of our outlook.
We're also concerned about developments in China, where growth is clearly decelerating. We still think it would be around 7%, but it has financial vulnerabilities that make us concerned. As we talked before about Europe, especially it's a fragile recovery and it may interact with the Russian-Ukraine situation. Those are external things which we always must be mindful of.
In terms of the tapering, I don't see that as a major issue for us. The U.S. Federal Reserve is in the process of readjusting to a normalizing economy, and to the extent that they adjust to that, the normalizing economy will be beneficial for Canada. Yes, at some point, no doubt interest rates in the U.S. will begin to rise to become more normal. That will be coming in the context of rising U.S. growth and, we presume, exports from Canada into that higher growth, and therefore a stronger economy here. So when that comes at you, then it's not some external force, it's being all part of the same picture.