WINNIPEG, Jan. 21 (MarketsFarm) – The following is a glance at the news moving markets in Canada and globally.

– After releasing its Monetary Policy Report on Jan. 20, the Bank of Canada announced it was not changing its key interest rate, which will remain at 0.25 per cent. Despite the central bank predicting Canada’s GDP will decline by 2.5 per cent for the first quarter of 2021, growth will come soon after, assuming a greater access to COVID-19 vaccinations and an easing of pandemic-related lockdowns. The bank expects the country’s GDP will grow to four per cent overall in 2021, 4.8 per cent in 2022 and 2.5 per cent in 2023. “We’re moving in the wrong direction right now,” Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said in a press conference. “We’re starting off in a deeper hole. We’ve got to climb back out of that.” The report came on the same day Statistics Canada announced the Consumer Price Index increased by 0.7 per cent in December from a year earlier, a decrease from one per cent last November.

– Hours after being sworn into his new role, United States President Joe Biden erased some of the policy remnants of his predecessor Donald Trump by signing 15 executive actions yesterday. Some of the actions included re-entering the Paris climate accord, remaining in the World Health Organization, implementing a mask mandate on federal property, revoking the permit to the Keystone XL pipeline and suspending student loan payments until September.

– Twitter locked the account of the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. yesterday after it posted a tweet calling Uighur women “baby-making machines,” which was later deleted. This came two days after then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that China’s policies against the Muslim ethnic group in the Xinjiang region were “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” In retribution, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced the country will refuse entry to Pompeo and 27 other officials from the Trump administration.