Trade deficit grows to NZ$1.4 bln in year to November 2012 vs a surplus of NZ288 mln in year to Nov-11, despite strong exports to China

No surprises there, then. A clear and obvious result of government and reserve bank negligence re the exchange rate.

Note that of course trade deficits or surpluses cannot be blamed on the GFC. They are a global zero sum game.

Most of the decline is in sales to Australia. That wont have anything to do with the exchange rate and the decline in commodity prices wont either.

60% increase!.....what does it mean for future NZ govt foreign policy positions...how soon before Beijing has it's own Waihopai just down the road.....

Xenophobia is not necessary here.

NZ is like a professional ballet dancer, moving beautifully between USA and China. NZ cares about $ not political non-sense, which is absolutely right and should be encouraged.

Nevertheless, which product decrease most or increase most in the Nov export?

The question is...will we be better off under the Beijing thumb, than we have been under the Washington thumb!

Follow the money.

HISTORY has a habit of repeating itself. The Goldrush. The Australian minerals boom of the 1800's began with the discovery of much gold in Victoria, establishing Melbourne as the centre of government until it was re-located to Canberra 100 years later.

In Victoria in 1860, Chinese were 10% of the population and 20% of the diggers in the Victorian goldfields, which led to the "Lambing Flats" riots and the introduction of "The Chinese Migration Restriction Act of 1861" which became the forerunner of the "White Australia Policy" which lasted for 90 years

Lambing Flat Riots

Events on the Australian goldfields in the 1850s led to hostility toward Chinese miners on the part of many Europeans, which was to affect many aspects of European-Chinese relations in Australia for the next century. Some of the sources of conflict between European and Chinese miners arose from the nature of the industry they were engaged in. Most gold mining in the early years was alluvial mining, where the gold was in small particles mixed with dirt, gravel and clay close to the surface of the ground, or buried in the beds of old watercourses or "leads". Extracting the gold took no great skill, but it was hard work, and generally speaking, the more work, the more gold the miner won. Europeans tended to work alone or in small groups, concentrating on rich patches of ground, and frequently abandoning a reasonably rich claim to take up another one rumoured to be richer. Very few miners became wealthy; the reality of the diggings was that relatively few miners found even enough gold to earn them a living.

The Chinese generally worked in large organised groups, covering the entire ground's surface, so that if there was any gold there, the Chinese miners found it. They lived communally and frugally, and could subsist on a much lower return than Europeans. The rural background of most of the Chinese diggers suited them very well to life as alluvial goldminers: they were used to long hours of hard outdoor work as a member of a disciplined team, accustomed to simple sleeping quarters and basic food, and were satisfied with a much smaller return of gold than the majority of Europeans.

European resentment of the apparent success of the Chinese first surfaced as petty complaints: Europeans made stereotyped claims that the Chinese muddied the water holes, they worked on the Sabbath, they were thieves, they had insanitary habits, they accepted low wages and would drive down the value of labour. There is no evidence that any of these things were true. But because the Chinese were distinctive in appearance, language and dress, they became classic targets for xenophobia, and surly resentment became systematic hatred.

These pressures gave rise to several violent protests against government policies across Victoria and New South Wales in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The first anti-Chinese demonstration occurred in Bendigo in July 1854. Some of these incidents took the form of outright attempts at excluding the Chinese from a goldfield, or a portion of it. Disputes between European and Chinese miners flared into brawls at Daylesford and Castlemaine. A party of Chinese en route to the Victorian diggings from Robe discovered a new goldfield at Ararat, and were driven off their find by Europeans. Similar events occurred in New South Wales, which was just feeling the impact of significant Chinese immigration. European miners drove Chinese off the diggings at Rocky River in New England (Australia) in 1856. Serious confrontations followed at Adelong in 1857 and Tambaroora in 1858. In Victoria the Buckland River goldfield was the scene of repeated incidents, culminating in a major riot in July 1857.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambing_Flat_riots