Japan Food Exports:

 Article Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220805/p2g/00m/0bu/035000c

Article:

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The value of Japan's agricultural and seafood exports in the first six months of 2022 expanded 13.1 percent from a year earlier, marking a record high for the period, as waning coronavirus cases encouraged more people to eat out, government data showed Friday.

Exports in the January-June period totaled 652.5 billion yen ($4.9 billion), supported by robust shipments to the United States as well as a weaker yen, according to the data released by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Ideas:

Perhaps there is always some kind of exotic feeling about some Japanese agricultural products and being seen as different from those from the domestic aqricultural products.

But of course it can just be related to differences in quality and growing methods which might make some of the products more favorable than domestic products.

And what about US products related to imports into Japan. Is the Japanese market still somewhat closed off with high trade tariff barriers or is it just consumer demand and consumer choice such as in the car industry.

Article:

A range of items also hit record highs, with exports of scallops climbing 67.8 percent to 38.7 billion yen and those of yellowtail rising 64.5 percent to 20.9 billion yen. Both marine products were supported by growing demand from Japanese restaurants in the United States.

Japanese sake exports increased 33.7 percent to 23.4 billion yen, lifted by online shopping.

Exports of strawberries, immensely popular in Asia, also increased by 29.7 percent.

Meanwhile, exports of beef fell 5.2 percent to 21.4 billion yen after the United States hiked tariffs sharply on Japanese beef shipments in late March.

Ideas:

That's a lot exports going to Japanease restaurants in the US and most likely in the major metropolitan areas including the state of California.

And of course, the demand for some US equivalent products might be as high as again consumer tastes and consumer demand for some US products might not be as high, which is a given and understanble as consumers have different tastes and likes.

For example Japanese sake exports might be an acquired taste meaning maybe some consumers in the US learned to like and enjoy the taste of Japanese sake overtime.

Japanese strawberries are probably a product that have gone through a lot of changes until they have become a major export product for Japan, by that meaning an lot innovation to improve the quality and taste of the Japanese strawberries overtime.

Tariffs on Japanese beef products doesn't really make any sense as the US market it very large and probably the total amount of Japanese beef products is very small compared to the amount of US beef in the US, so there is no need for US beef producers to feel any real competition from Japanese beef products.

Article:

By market, China was the biggest buyer of Japanese agricultural exports with a 18.0 percent increase to 120.1 billion yen, followed by the United States, up 34.5 percent to 104.6 billion yen.

However, shipments to Hong Kong sank 10.9 percent to 91.7 billion yen, dented by restrictions on dining out following a surge of COVID-19 cases.

The Japanese government has set a target of raising annual agricultural and seafood exports to 2 trillion yen by 2025 and to 5 trillion yen by 2030.

Ideas:

China is a huge market so its natural being very close to Japan that Japan is able to export a lot of its products to China. And course there is still the exotic feel of products, maybe, from a different country and or Japanese products are well liked in China.

Of course the US too is a very large market so again it logical that Japanese exporters take advantage of a large consumer market and try to sell as much as they can in that market too.

Hopefully we have seen the last or near last of restrictions dining out in Hong Kong, China, and else where and economic activity can finally begin to get back to some kind of normalcy.

With the new trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region the target that Japan has set are probably very doable as more and more trade will take place among economies in the future.

Article:

Of the total export amount, small cargoes -- worth 200,000 yen or less per item and included in the shipment data since 2020 -- accounted for 36.1 billion yen.

The value of exports in June, released the same day, rose 24.0 percent from a year earlier to 117.3 billion yen.

Ideas:

As more and more economies continue to open up and as more and more consumers, globally, get out and about it can be seen as a postive for exporters in Japan and globally.

And again as the new trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region and globally go into effect they will bring more and continued openings in the global market for Japanese products.

Even though there are hints of a global recession in 2023 consumers globally are still going to want what they want and any kind of recession should not cause too many problems for the exporting of Japanese products globally in 2023.

Even if the US/China trade situation is not completely sovled it should not have an effect on Japanese exports globally or even to China and the US.

Have a nice day and be safe!