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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 just 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.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Nick, good here you do.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
I'm very well, thank you. Not what's driven it higher
than we expected?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
A range of things in terms of that on the
product size, dairy prices are a lot better, so you know,
a basic boost and dairy price is account for about
half of that. The prices are good across all sorts
of things that we export. Quei route prices are pretty good.
Beef prices are holding up, high Land recovering, so that's
already helped.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Is there any indication that we are managing to diverse
by our trade a little bit away from China, which
is what we've been trying to do for a while.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
There is a little bit, yep. 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 key partners, so the Netherlands, UK,
Indonesia and Canada. 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. But you know we're

(01:11):
going to need a lot more a lot more of
that diversification in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, it's fair point. Well, how the Trump tariff's going
to change what we're seeing.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Here directly for US. I mean it's a hit, you know.
I think it's something that nine hundred million dollars for
New Zealand. The bigger hit will come sort of indirectly
through our trading partners. 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.
It is a pretty big terror from the US. So ultimately,

(01:38):
if those terraffs make China poorer, they won't be buying
our great stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Nick. 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, So should
we be should we be seeing this as the start
of a trend with just a monthly March blip.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
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 the whole year, so that's good.
But yeah, the bigger picture is that global uncertainty that
we're seeing around around tariffs, around and sort of that
knock on to 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

(02:18):
really wants to invest. Everyone's kind of just sitting on
the sidelines, and that's going to push down growth. Brilliant stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Hey, Nick, thank you very much, really appreciate Nick Brunsdon,
Infametrix Principle Economist. For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive,
listen live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,
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