China's exports fall at a faster pace

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Wednesday’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>And today we lead with news global trade is in the spotlight.</p><p>The run of dairy price rises ended in today's <a href="https://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/product-results/" target="_blank"><strong>Global Dairy Trade auction</strong></a> today. Overall prices fell -0.7% in USD terms, down -1.2% in NZD terms. The key WMP price fell -2.7% in a key shift, but one signaled by the weekly GDT Pulse events although today's price was actually higher than last week's Pulse result. Keeping the dip limited were rises for SMP, up +2.3% and for Cheddar cheese, up +4.5%. These two suggest better demand from the food service sector, especially in China.</p><p>In the US their <a href="https://www.the-lmi.com/october-2023-logistics-managers-index.html" target="_blank"><strong>logistics managers index</strong></a> (LMI) rose and quite sharply, indicating rising demand for these key distribution services, although freight rates actually decreased in this survey.</p><p>Meanwhile the US <a href="https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/us-international-trade-goods-and-services-september-2023" target="_blank"><strong>September trade result</strong></a> (for goods and services, that is, on a balance of payments basis) came in with a modest but continuing deficit. Overall exports rose +2.2% which overall imports rose +2.7%. This involved an increase in the goods deficit of $1.7 bln to -$86 bln and a decrease in the services surplus of $1.2 bn to +$25 bln. But still, this is the third lowest trade deficit since 2021.</p><p>Last week, the rising retail sales gains evaporated. Their weekly <a href="https://www.redbookresearch.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Redbook index</strong></a> of retail sales at brick & mortar outlets on a same store basis was up only +3.1% from the same week a year ago, barely beating inflation. Althoug