Episode Details

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Kia ora.

Welcome to Wednesday’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 American economic data is notably weaker today.

There was a full dairy auction overnight where the overall prices rose +2.5% in USD terms, up +1.6% in NZD terms. This brought more strength for the powders with SMP up +3.4% and WMP up +4.4%. BMP was up +8.4%. But butter, cheddar and AMF all fell. The result is an overall price level in the middle of the range since the start of 2025. It seems unlikely that farmgate payout forecasts will be changed by these auction results.

In the US. the weekly jobs report monitored by ADP indicated a pullback with hiring decelerating to +18,500 last week, the first reduction since early August and back to levels seen in the September 2025 to March 2026 period.

And bolstering the weak sentiment report we noted yesterday, today data on housing starts in the US was notably weak, down -5.2% in September from August, down -7.4% from a year ago.

It was worse for US pending home sales which were down -7.3% from August, down -11.3% from a year ago. The weakness was in all regions.

At a campaign rally, US President Trump backtracked on imposing tariffs on Canada's Bombardier aircraft maker - after "learning" they have manufacturing facilities in the state he was campaigning in.

In Canada, the results of the Alberta "independence" referendum are in and by a margin of 3:1, voters in that province opted to stay in Canada, a larger affirmation than was expected. 

Meanwhile, financial markets and some analysts are pricing in a +25 bps rate hike by the Bank of Canada to 2.5% at its October 29 Monetary Policy meeting.

In China, and as expected, the October Prime Loan Rate review has resulted in no changes. These two rates remain at record lows.

In Taiwan, their export orders leapt to a massive US$114.2 bln in September, far and away a record high and up +67% from the US$70.3 bln in September 2025. As impressive as this is, clearly it will come to an end at some point, but the trajectory since January 2025 is super impressive. 

In Indonesia, the prospect of significant social unrest is rising as their economy stutters into a new crisis where their government can't afford the social programs its citizens expect. Their currency is in a dark place at 18,000 rupiah to the USD. An unstable Indonesia full of economic pressures is a huge risk for Australia.

In Germany, producer prices zoomed up +1.9% in September from August to be up +6.7% from year-ago levels. That reprises the March 2023 rise and again all to do with fuel costs. So it is probably no surprise that German sentiment sl