Asia: Erratic trade data – ABN AMRO

According to Han de Jong, Chief Economist of ABN AMRO, Asia’s trade data has been strong recently and this strength has been caused by companies bringing forward their trade in order to get them in and out before tariffs apply (front loading) is impossible to assess.

Key Quotes

“Front loading must have boosted trade in recent months. Taiwan published export orders for October. They were up 5.1% yoy, a little better than the 4.2% of the month before, but below the average for the year.”

“The first sign of November trade comes from Korea, which publishes data on the first 20 days of each month. Exports were up 5.7% yoy in the first 20 days of November. The numbers for September and October were 26.0% and 21.6%, respectively. This data is volatile, so we must not read too much in one month’s data, but it does not look strong.”