Trade

• New Hope's 69% profit fall on an underlying basis, from $384 million to $119 million, comes as the COVID-19 economic slowdown weighs on global energy demand and the price of coal, one of Australia's largest commodity export.
• Developing green hydrogen in the next five years will be critical to achieving cost reduction and growing a significant manufacturing and export industry based on UK technology.
• As domestic activity contracts, so goes the international economy; trade will shrink by around one-fifth in 2020, foreign direct investment flows by up to 40% and remittances will drop by over $100 billion.
• After consultations with the Canadian government, the U.S. has determined that trade is expected to normalize in the last four months of the year, declining after surges experienced earlier in the year.
• The specific impact on production and local responses to ASF is expected to create considerable uncertainty around global animal protein trade in 2020.
• The growth forecast for Mexico is below that of its North American trade partners, the United States and Canada, which the IMF predicts will suffer contractions of 8% and 8.4%, respectively, in 2020.
• The first stage of 100,000 tonnes of annual capacity is expected to come online in 2020, and will produce nickel sulphate for export to China.
• More recently, in the first semester of 2020, COVID-19-related disruptions to the local markets and trade, already hampered by the lingering impact of the prolonged conflict, provided further support, as did the lower imports due to the border screening implemented by the Government of Uganda.
• In the second half of 2020, China is expected to receive about 80 million oil barrels over July-December based at the current buying pace, as Beijing steps up efforts to comply with the Phase 1 trade deal.
• The UK has secured a free trade agreement with Japan, which is the UK's first major trade deal as an independent trading nation and will increase trade with Japan by an estimated £15.2 billion.
• Rapidly rising almond production coupled with trade wars and COVID-19 impacts have cut prices for farmers nearly in half over the past year and they will not likely fully recover for at least a couple of seasons.
• If no trade agreement is completed by the end of the year, the UK will not have any formal deal with the EU - which accounted for 43% of UK exports in 2019.
• Irish businesses should act on the assumption that the UK and EU will fail to reach a free trade agreement before the end of the year.
• Credit rating agency Fitch has revised its Brexit view and now expects the UK-EU trade relationship to move to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms at the start of next year due to the lack of progress in talks.
• China's steel exports have been subject to 15 new anti-dumping investigations in the first nine months of the year, more than all of last year, as experts warn that the US-China trade war and the coronavirus pandemic have hastened a trend towards global protectionism.
• Economic growth will take a hit for 2020 as trade flows and prices are still affected by multi-country lockdowns even though many supply chains are starting to get back to some semblance of normality.
• The real value of Australia's gold exports is forecast to set a record of $26 billion in 2019-20, driven by higher prices and export volumes, before declining to $21 billion in 2024-25 as gold prices ease back.
• Australia's LNG export volumes are forecast to rise from 75 million tonnes in 2018-19 to 81 million tonnes in 2020-21, as the last two projects in Australia's recent wave of LNG investment ramp up, before edging back down to 80 million tonnes by 2024-25.
• Australia's export volumes are forecast to grow from 210 million tonnes in 2018-19 to 224 million tonnes by 2024-25, as a number of mines ramp up production.
• Japan Domestic demand fell by only 7% y/y in Q2 as export declines outpaced imports, and private consumption will contract faster than investment in the rest of the year.
• World trade in cereals for 2020-21 is forecast at 441.4 million tonnes, 1.6% above 2019-21 due to anticipated larger shipments of rice and coarse grains.
• The recommencement of Chinese imports of US LNG will contribute to China's commitment under the Phase One trade deal to buy US$ 52 billion of energy products from the US in 2020 and 2021.

Last updated: 01 October 2020