BMO’s Brian Belski Brushes Off Tariff Panic, Doubles Down on Canadian Stocks
Despite Trump’s tariff pressure, BMO’s Brian Belski urges investors to stay the course with Canadian quality stocks—and ignore the panic.

BMO’s Brian Belski isn’t rattled. While Canadian companies issue downbeat 2025 forecasts and pull guidance altogether, citing escalating uncertainty from Donald Trump’s latest tariff blitz, Belski is doubling down on optimism. To him, the bearish tone sweeping across Bay Street is nothing more than a panic-driven overreaction to the kind of headline risk that’s best ignored. “Unsubstantiated noise,” he calls it—rhetoric and emotional knee-jerks that have bullied analysts, executives, and market watchers into unjustified negativity.
On May 8, President Trump launched his so-called “Liberation Day” policy—an aggressive new wave of tariffs targeting global trade partners. The move reverberated through Canadian boardrooms with a chilling effect. Spin Master yanked its 2025 guidance. Air Canada dialed back its forecasts. Rogers and A&W echoed similar caution. But for Belski, this caution is exactly where the opportunity lies. He sees this moment not as a warning sign but a buying signal. According to him, history is on the side of those who can stomach short-term volatility and take the contrarian route when others panic.
Even with his characteristically bullish stance, Belski did revise his 2025 year-end target for the S&P/TSX Composite index downward by 7 percent. But he called it a “minor tweak”—hardly a surrender to bearish momentum. His reasoning is anchored in earnings revision trends, which, though now trending negative, had remained flat for most of the year. To Belski, the recent shift is more of a sentiment swing than a fundamental flaw. That’s why he’s urging investors to tune out the noise and refocus on Canadian quality.
