The cheap JPY isn't boosting Japan's merchandise exports, but it has helped with a sharp recovery in tourism, even though arrivals from China remain subdued.
The recent recovery in the mfg cycle has been underwhelming. One reason is its narrowness: sales at TSMC are up, but for the rest of the listed are flat.
The shunto is important for regular workers, but part-time workers are now also getting decent pay rises, a real sign that the labour market is tightening.
The cheap JPY is boosting Japan's tourist inflows, but there continue to be no signs of the currency helping merchandise exports.
China doesn't release detailed GDP by expenditure data, but the available snippets show Q1 outperformance was due to net exports.
Consumer sentiment does remain low in China, but it is encouraging that income growth has picked up, while the savings rate is coming down.
The consensus on China has improved in recent weeks, but there's nothing in the Q1 activity release to reinforce that shift.
There's just no floor for property. Starts fell again in March and are now 65% below the 2020 peak, and barely above the low of late 2008.
There's a growing divergence between ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and that shows the contrast between weak property and strong manufacturing activity.
Official data show property price deflation isn't worsening. Private measures suggest the same thing, though anecdotes suggest actual market conditions are much weaker
Korean data today continue the clear turn in regional import prices of recent months. This will matter for inflation, even in China.
Today's PBC action to drain liquidity for the second consecutive month via the MLF follows a big run-up in 2H23. Still, it does show that the bank remains a cautious easer.
The BOJ uses machine orders as a lead for machinery investment. Data show Feb was stronger, but not by enough to lift the 3mma by much.
A summary of what happened on East Asia Econ last week, and what to look for in the next seven days.
Wage growth did slow in 2023, but that looks cyclical, not breaking the higher rate of trend growth that's been apparent since the pandemic.
China's monthly monetary release doesn't seem nearly as important as it once did, because a lot of the major indicators are rangebound. The one indicator that looked a bit different last month was M1, but that rebound fully reversed in March back down to just 1.1% YoY.
We can be increasingly confident that mortgage lending has bottomed out. But there aren't any signs of a rebound.
We think today's export data were strong, reaching an all-time high in CNY terms. If there was weakness, it was in imports. The result, obviously, is a renewed widening of the trade surplus.
Exports rose MoM in March, while imports were weak. Outside concern about China's trade surplus is going to intensify.
Today's Q1 BOJ consumer survey shows sentiment about income rising to the highest level in 20 years.
The BOK today sounded confident that core is coming down, but argued that headline is more uncertain. Of course, these two measures are different, but the distinction still feels disingenuous, and gives the impression that the bank is just trying to buy a bit more time.
Demographics are really having a big impact on the composition of employment.
We take a detailed look at services prices, which account for 50% of the CPI basket, and need to continue to rise if inflation is to be sustained.
Data today show Korea employment did tick down in March, but the unemployment rate remaining below 3%, the lowest since the 1990s.
Price trends in China remain range bound, with PPI falling at a 2.5%-3% YoY rate, and CPI fluctuating around 0.7%. Narrow leading indicators for inflation suggest some strengthening from here, but a real change in inflation dynamics needs a change in China's overall macro dynamics.