Don’t lose sleep over the $159m deficit reported for December’s merchandise trade, when the market was looking for a surplus of $75m (BNZ +$135m). The deviation was accounted for by aircraft imports. The more genuine surprise was, arguably, that exports, in being down 6.9% on a year ago, did not drop as much as the market expected (-11.3% y/y). And this, in spite of the dairy price slump that’s now clearly feeding into the data.
Read the full report: Economic Research