New Zealand's goods trade has held up "relatively well" amid the Covid-19 pandemic that has ravaged economies globally, economist Rodney Jones of Wigram Capital Advisors says.
"The hit to New Zealand is much more through the export of services," he told TVNZ1's Q+A with Jack Tame.
"Right now our trade position has held up much better than I would've thought, but we'll have to see the spill over from the depressionary shock in the US and Europe.
"We're going to be in a very different world for some time to come. Goods will be OK but services is a real problem.
"There's no winners from this shock. Every country, every economy faces really profound challenge unlike we've seen for 70 years."
Mr Jones, who had been monitoring the Chinese response to the virus, said they are just emerging from their lockdown now.
"What we know about China is that they did contain the virus through the lockdown, but we don't know how they did it and the path of that containment, and we don't know if there's still the level of background infections."
He said New Zealand would have to "make our own rules" in the recovery when it emerges from lockdown.
"We cannot look to China to work it out - we don't have enough data."
Mr Jones said an issue for many countries was that the US no longer had the Centers for Disease Control in Beijing or the pandemic group in the National Security Council.
"We relied on the US, and the US kind of took their eye off the ball."
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