Nick Brunsdon: Infometrics principal economist on goods exports going up by 19 percent

There's been some positive trade news.

Stats NZ data shows goods exports rose 19 percent to $7.6 billion in March - compared to the same time a year ago.

Milk powder, butter and cheese rose 35 percent to $2.3 billion.

Goods imports rose 12 percent to $6.6 billion.

Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon unpacked the factors.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed be
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now we've got some positive trade news stats. New Zealand
data show that goods exports rose nineteen percent to seven
point six billion dollars in March as compared to the
same time a year ago. The monthly trade balance is
a surplus of nine hundred and seventy million dollars, which
came higher than expected. And Inframetrics principal economist Nick Brunsden
is with us, Hey, Nick, good here, you don't I'm

(00:37):
very well thank You know what's driven it higher than
we expected?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
A range of things in terms of on the product size.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Dairy prices are a lot better, so you know, a
basic boost, and dairy prices account for about.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Half of that. The prices are good across all sorts
of things that we export.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Chevy fruit prices are pretty good, Beef prices are holding up,
Hie Land recovering, so that's already helped.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Is there any indication that we are managing to diversify
our trade a little bit away from China, which is
what we've been trying to do for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
There is a little bit. Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
So about half of our trade goes to the big
three China, Australia and the US. Over the past year
we had a more than twenty percent increase to some
of our key partners, so the Netherlands, UK, Indonesia and Canada.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
So that's really good. But I think they've moved the
dial from sort of fifty percent to fifty two percent.
So good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
But you know we're going to need a lot more
a lot more of that diversification in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, it's fair point. Well, how the Trump tariff's going
to change what we're seeing.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Here directly for US.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
I mean it's a hit, you know. I think it's
something at nine hundred million dollars for New Zealand. The
bigger hit will come sort of indirectly through our trading partners.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Obviously China is the largest importer of our goods and
they're looking at one hundred and twenty five percent or
depending on what day of the week.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
It is a pretty big terror from the US.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
So ultimately, if those teriffs make China poorer, they won't
be buying our great stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Nick.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Look, the thing is, I mean, we're obviously going to
look at this and say, Yay, things are finally on
the up and and everything is looking good. But the
fact is March is always a little bit better as
a month for us as a country. Would we be
should we be seeing this as the start of a
trend with just a monthly March blip.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
So that even on an annual basis, the numbers are
pretty good. So we had a seven percent increase in
the year to March over.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
The whole year, so that's good.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
But yeah, the bigger picture is that global uncertainty that
we're seeing around around tariffs, around and sort of that
knock onto investment. We think that will sort of push
out New Zealand's recovery by a couple of years. It's
just it's not the kind of environment where anyone really
wants to invest. Everyone's kind of just sitting on the sidelines,
and that's going to push down growth. Brilliant stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Hey, Nick, thank you very much, really appreciate Nick Brunsdon,
Infametrix Principal Economist.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
For more from News Talks b listen live on air
or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you
go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.