Doubling Exports: How Are We Doing? | Free Enterprise

Doubling Exports: How Are We Doing? | Free Enterprise

This blogpost by John Murphy on the US site Free Enterprise contains some astonishing statistics which I don't think we need doubt the veracity of. It is indeed challenging to us in New Zealand to ask how much our own exports have increased in the same period? I don't have an answer for that.

However I can say that our neighbour Australia, like the US and Canada, is our top trading partner. Exports and imports in the period ended June 2010 were $17,435,650 millions. It is also significant that of our top ten trading partners five of them: Australia, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are countries with which we have an FTA arrangement. Trade with these partners accounts for well over half of New Zealand's trade - about 64%.

The ASEAN countries are New Zealand's fourth largest export market after the APEC countries, the OECD and the EU.