Japan experienced a robust 10% surge in exports for December compared to the previous year, driven by a reinvigorated trade relationship with China and heightened demand for automobiles, machinery, and computer chips. The preliminary customs data, released on Wednesday, also revealed a nearly 7% decline in imports, resulting in a trade surplus of \u00a562 billion ($410 million).<\/p>\n
The depreciation of the Japanese yen has played a pivotal role in supporting export-oriented manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda, and Sony. However, the weakened currency has concurrently increased costs for essential imports like oil and gas, impacting the nation\u2019s economy, the third-largest globally.<\/p>\n
The reduction in oil prices proved beneficial in December, leading to an 18% YoY decline in energy imports. A substantial recovery in demand from China contributed significantly to the 10% increase in overall exports, while imports from China remained relatively flat. Additionally, a surge in tourist arrivals counted as exports in trade statistics, contributed to the positive trade balance.<\/p>\n
Economist Gabriel Ng from Capital Economics noted that the late-year improvement \u201cmeans that overall net exports should have made a significant contribution to GDP growth in the fourth quarter.\u201d However, he cautioned that export growth is expected to be sluggish in the coming year.<\/p>\n
Preliminary data from a factory managers\u2019 survey, released concurrently, indicated weakness in the export manufacturing sector. The \u201cnew export orders\u201d component fell to 46.0 on a scale up to 100, where 50 marks the boundary between expansion and contraction.<\/p>\n
The United States, being Japan\u2019s largest export market, witnessed a notable 20% surge in imports from Japan in December, while Japanese imports of U.S. goods decreased by 7%. Car shipments recorded a remarkable 16% increase in unit terms, totalling 1.47 million vehicles, and over 35% in dollar value. Other sectors, including power generation equipment, construction machinery, and semiconductors, also demonstrated robust growth.<\/p>\n
For the entire year, Japan\u2019s exports grew by 3%, reaching \u00a5100.9 trillion ($680 billion), while imports decreased by 7% to \u00a5110.2 trillion ($740 billion). The trade deficit substantially narrowed to \u00a59.2 trillion ($62 billion), a significant improvement from the \u00a520.3 trillion deficit in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan\u2019s exports surged almost 10% in December from a year earlier, helped by a revival in trade with China and strong demand for vehicles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":369,"featured_media":11589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[7622,7626,7624,7620,5981,7625,7618,7623,353,7619,7621,6547],"class_list":["post-11588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","tag-auto-demand","tag-chinas-demand","tag-computer-chips","tag-december-data","tag-economic-recovery","tag-energy-imports","tag-japan-exports","tag-machinery","tag-oil-prices","tag-trade-surplus","tag-trade-with-china","tag-weak-yen"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}