July 21, 2023
In June, Japan recorded a trade surplus of 43 billion yen ($300 million), marking the first time in nearly two years that the country returned to a positive trade balance. This was attributed to robust exports to the United States and lower energy import costs.
Despite the positive result in June, Japan still faced a trade deficit of 6.96 trillion yen for the first half of 2023, which was an improvement of about 13% compared to the previous year.
The strong demand from the U.S. for cars and construction machinery contributed to the 1.5% increase in overall exports, while imports decreased by 12.9% due to declines in crude oil, coal, and liquefied natural gas imports. Japan’s trade surplus with the United States expanded by 37.4% to 817.50 billion yen, while it had a trade deficit of 442.83 billion yen with China, down 7.6%. The ongoing challenge for Japan has been dealing with surging energy import costs, compounded by the weakness of the yen against the U.S. dollar, driven by differences in interest rates between the two countries.
Despite the trade deficit for the first half of the year, exports showed a positive trend, increasing by 3.1% to 47.35 trillion yen, while imports rose slightly by 0.7% to 54.31 trillion yen.
Source: Nikkei Asia
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