US jobs & housing falter. Canada eyes rate hike. China LPRs unchanged. Taiwan export orders leap. Eyes on Indonesian risks. Google Cloud fails in the UK.
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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 slid in October although not by as much as you might have expected.
In the UK, Google's cloud services failed and hit a broad range of major companies, including banks. Revolut was one of the hardest hit along with Lloyds, NatWest and HSBC.
The UST 10yr yield is down -1 bp from yesterday to 5.13%.
The price of gold is at US$4118/oz and down -US$21 from yesterday. Silver is just under US$58/oz and up +US$1.
Oil prices have fallen -US$5 from yesterday to just over US$98/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is down -$1 at US$109/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar is +20 bps firmer from yesterday, at just on 56.8 USc. Against the Aussie we are also up +10 bps at 81.2 AUc. Against the euro we are up +10 bps as well at 50.6 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just under 60.6 and up nearly +20 bps from yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$82,722 and up a bit less than +1.0% from yesterday at this time. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at +/-1.2%.
You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz.
Kia ora. I'm David Chaston and we’ll do this again tomorrow.
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