Japan May Exports:

 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210616/p2g/00m/0bu/022000c

Article

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's exports in May jumped 49.6 percent from a year ago to post the sharpest rise in over four decades, with their rebound from a coronavirus pandemic-induced downturn driven by solid demand for cars and auto parts, government data showed Wednesday.

Exports of goods surged to 6.26 trillion yen ($57 billion) in the reporting month, increasing at the fastest pace since a record 51.4 percent leap was logged in April 1980, according to the preliminary data released by the Finance Ministry, which began compiling the statistics in January 1979.

Ideas:

This is of course is very good. But we need to remember, it is year to year measurement. 

Because of the not so good spring 2020, it makes the May percent seem really big. The key word is "increasing at the fastest pace." This does not mean overall amount but value which is much different.

While its very good that exports rebounded by a large amount, it also reminds us just how bad the spring 2020 was, not just in Japan but globally.

Article:

After expanding 16.1 percent in March and 38.0 percent in April, exports grew for the third consecutive month, partly in reaction to a 28.3 percent year-on-year fall seen in May last year due to the initial shock of the pandemic that pushed down global demand and disrupted supply chains.

Exports of both cars and auto parts more than doubled, up 135.5 percent and 139.1 percent from a year earlier, respectively. Demand for the auto-related Japanese products was strong especially from the United States, a ministry official told reporters.

Ideas:

There could be several reasons why exports increase a lot over three months from last year.

The first of course being the huge decrease in demand globally because of the pandemic.

Another reason might be related to a collapse of the logistics and supplies chains which might have disrupted production at manufacturing plants.

The companies might not have been able to produce the products as needed and or they didn't have the needed intermediary parts needed to product the final products.

And the other reason might have been the spread of the virus in many different businesses especially manufacturing facilities.

For example, in the meat packing plants in the US during that time and after, many of the workers in the plants contacted the virus and the plants had to shut down for an unspecified amount of time.

As such the logistics and supply chains related to those companies were also affected, and even more the supermarkets and other places that sold the meat products suffered supply shortage problems.

So most likely the same things could have happened with the auto industry in Japan.

Article:

Imports also saw a remarkable rise of 27.9 percent to 6.45 trillion yen, up for the fourth straight month following a 12.8 percent boost in April, due to a recovery of domestic consumption and rebound in crude oil prices.

The country's goods trade balance with the rest of the world came to a deficit of 187.15 billion yen, the first red ink in four months.

Ideas:

And again part of the reason for the increase in imports might have been the continued improvement in logistics and supplies chains as they have mostly now gotten back to normal from the disaster of the spring 2020 period.

And of course maybe consumer demand has increased somewhat but probably not back to the pre-pandemic level as many consumers might still be concerned about the future and jobs.

A rebound in crude oil prices usually just means the value of the commodity has gone up, which would increase the overall value of the total imports, not necessarily the volume of the imports. 

Have a nice day and be safe!