LONDON (Reuters) - Another prolonged bout of wrangling over the debt ceiling in the United States could prompt Fitch to review the country's AAA credit rating with "potentially negative implications", the agency said on Thursday.
Fitch assigns a stable outlook to its U.S. rating.
The United States managed to avert a threatened government shutdown recently when Congress approved extending the government's debt limit for three months after President Donald Trump struck a deal with Democratic congressional leaders.
Congress and the White House now face a Dec. 8 deadline on the debt limit and government spending.
Edward Parker, a managing director at Fitch Ratings, said the debt ceiling would be back on the agenda fairly soon, possibly around February or March, which were typically months of large negative cashflows from the U.S. Treasury.
"If we do get back down to the wire, with the debt ceiling not being raised or suspended when the Treasury is running out of money, then we would review the U.S. rating with potentially negative implications," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a Fitch sovereign ratings conference in London.
