Northern summer sag

<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>And today we lead with news a quiet end to July as the northern hemisphere holidays in the heat, has brought out some tame second tier data. And China chipped in with an underwhelming announcement of how they will deal with their slowdown.</p><p>First, although it improved in July from June, the <a href="https://chicago.ismworld.org/news-publications/reports/research-survey/" target="_blank"><strong>Chicago PMI</strong></a> that measures activity in the key Mid-West manufacturing region remained solidly negative. And there were also signs of improvement in the <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/research/surveys/tmos/2023/2307" target="_blank"><strong>Dallas Fed's July factory survey</strong></a> even if it stayed negative as well. But it is the Mid-West one that needs to move up more to indicate a better outlook.</p><p>However, we are seeing a good recovery in <a href="https://www.esri.cao.go.jp/en/stat/shouhi/shouhi-e.html" target="_blank"><strong>Japanese consumer sentiment</strong></a>. It still has a way to go to get back to pre-pandemic levels but it is rising quickly now. Meanwhile the Bank of Japan ran an unscheduled bond auction yesterday in a bid to stop yields rising too fast.</p><p>China's <a href="http://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202307/t20230731_1941624.html" target="_blank"><strong>official factory PMI survey</strong></a> contracted the least in July in the last four months of contraction (49.3). But their official services PMI fell to its weakest level of the year, now with only a tame expansion (51.5). The private Caixin version is out later today for factories, and Thursday for services.</p><p>Yesterday's '<a href="https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/202307/content_6895599.htm" target="_blank"><strong>big stimulus announcement</strong></a>' in Beijing turned out to be a damp squi