Beijing and Canberra try to make up

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Tuesday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the International edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>Today we lead with news dominated by idiot-managers - Trump, Musk, and Bankman-Fried. Fortunately away from that there is real economic news. Not a lot, but some.</p><p>In Canada, <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221219/dq221219b-eng.htm?HPA=1" target="_blank"><strong>November producer prices fell</strong></a> by -0.4% from October, after a +2.4% rise in the prior month. This was in line with market forecasts. Much of the fall can be attributed to declining oil prices. But remember, year-on-year they are up a massive +9.7%, although that is the first time this year-on-year increase has been below +10% since early 2021.</p><p>In China, US bank Citigroup said it was <a href="https://www.chinabankingnews.com/2022/12/19/citigroup-to-wind-down-consumer-banking-operations-in-china/" target="_blank"><strong>winding down its consumer business</strong></a> there, just the next of a broad pullback by western companies keen to lower their exposure to China.</p><p>In Germany, business sentiment improved in December, which was a bit of a surprise - and more so because it is the third consecutive month of improvement in <a href="https://www.ifo.de/sites/default/files/secure/umfragen-gsk/ku-202212/ku-2022-12-pm-geschaeftsklima-DT.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>this Ifo survey</strong></a>. To be fair, many sentiment indicators are 'improving' in Germany, so a trend is developing. That is no doubt because of growing confidence they will get through the winter without too much difficulty from Russia's attempted energy strangulation. Later in the week we get the December GfK consumer sentiment survey and that is expected to be less negative too.</p><p>But it has taken some very large calls to get here. After setting aside almost €450 bln to date tackling its energy crisis, Germany is also p