Australia's balance on goods rose $4,296 million in June to a surplus of $1,929 million, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Thursday morning. The seasonally adjusted figures were released at 11.30am.
Exports did the work. Goods credits rose $4,196 million, or 9.6 per cent, to $47,696 million. Imports barely moved, falling $100 million or 0.2 per cent to $45,768 million. On those numbers the entire swing back into surplus is an export story, and within exports it is close to a single commodity story.
The ABS attributes the export rise to non-monetary gold. Metal ores and minerals, the category that carries iron ore and is normally the engine of the trade account, rose $839 million or 6.2 per cent. That is a fifth of the total increase.
Non-monetary gold is gold held as a commodity rather than as a central bank reserve asset, and it behaves differently from the rest of the export book. Volumes can move sharply month to month on shipment timing, and the price responds to global risk pricing rather than to Australian industrial capacity. A surplus built on it is a surplus that reflects what the rest of the world is worried about at least as much as what Australia dug up and shipped.
That distinction matters for reading the number. A trade surplus driven by ore and energy volumes tells you something about demand for Australian production. One driven by gold tells you something about demand for a hedge.
On the import side the movement was concentrated too. Fuel and lubricants fell $935 million, or 11.9 per cent, which is most of the reason the import total declined at all. Other import categories rose enough to offset almost all of it.
Fuel imports are being read against a closed waterway. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries about a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade, has been shut since late February. Iran and Oman agreed the coordinates of a proposed shipping route through it on Wednesday, though Tehran has tied any reopening to the United States lifting its naval blockade.
The ABS publishes the value of what crossed the border, not the reason it did. A fall of that size in a single month is consistent with price movement, with volume, or with importers timing their purchases, and the release does not separate them.
June closes the financial year, which makes this release the one that sets the annual base. The monthly series is volatile and the ABS revises it, so a single month at 9.6 per cent export growth is not a trend.
The next reading, for July, is due in early September. The figure worth watching is metal ores and minerals, because that is the line that tells you whether the surplus has a floor under it or a shipment behind it.
