The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday, April 8, edition that National Bank Financial analyst Gabriel Dechaine has reaffirmed his "outperform" recommendation for Bank of Montreal. The Globe's David Leeder writes that Mr. Dechaine gave his share target a $17 trim to $144. Analysts on average target the shares at $151.93. While Mr. Dechaine saw the outcome of the implementation of U.S. tariffs as "better than expected" for Canadian banks, he warns a deteriorating macroeconomic backdrop will lead to significantly lower earnings moving forward. Mr. Dechaine says in a note: "Our economics team estimate that, under the current measures, the effective trade-weighted tariff rate on Canadian exports is below 5 per cent. This outcome is far less severe than the one we used in a report published earlier this year in a report entitled Trade war risk: still out there. In our severe downside scenario, we assumed 25-per-cent across-the-board tariffs for an extended period, which resulted in roughly 30-per-cent downside risk to sector earnings." Emphasizing the tariffs were not "an outright positive" for the sector, Mr. Dechaine cut his 2025 earnings per share estimates by 2 per cent and his 2026 projections by 7 per cent.