Episode Details

Title: Markets jump to conclusions

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Kia ora.

Welcome to Tuesday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.

Today we lead with news the US-Iran deal is being viewed with relief by financial markets, but commodity markets are less enthusiastic. Commodity prices are expected to remain higher than they were in February, before the US and Israel attacked Iran, even after this latest deal to end the war, as it will take months for risk premiums to retreat and give breathing space to commodity-importing economies.

However first today, American manufacturing output stalled in May from April to be +1.4% higher than year-ago levels and a lower improvement than expected.

Also coming in weaker than expected was the June factory survey for the New York region although they did report a small rise in new orders. The pace of input cost increases remains very elevated however.

Meanwhile NAHB survey of housebuilders was little-changed in June, remaining weak on affordability concerns

In Canada, May housing starts dipped from the prior month but remain high on an historical basis.

Canada also said its April industrial production was strong, with manufacturing sales up +4.2% following a +3.4% rise in March. Sales rose in 17 of the 21 subsectors, led by the fuel products and food subsectors.

India said its exports rose to US$45.2 bln in May, a record high for them and +18% above the May 2025 level

After three months of declines, industrial production rose in April in the EU in a better than expected result (even if the rise was quite minor).

And France is facing US pressure for attempting to get the US tech giant to pay some tax on their French operations. Big Tech has weaponised its support of the US President to try and avoid France's 3% digital services tax. Even that is too much for them. Relying on US tech is risky, and those risks got larger with the US banning key new Anthropic products "from export".

The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.46%, down -3 bps from this time yesterday.