Japan Trade Deficit:

 Article Source:

 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230316/p2g/00m/0bu/016000c

Article:

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan posted a trade deficit of 897.7 billion yen ($6.7 billion) in February, hurt by higher energy imports and a weaker yen, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.

Imports gained 8.3 percent from a year earlier to 8.55 trillion yen, the largest for February, while exports rose 6.5 percent to 7.65 trillion yen, also a record for the month, according to the ministry's preliminary data. The nation reported a trade deficit for the 19th straight month.

A weaker yen continued to inflate the value of imports, including coal, liquefied natural gas and crude oil. The yen was 13.5 percent lower than a year earlier relative to the U.S. dollar.

Ideas:

Even though imports and exports are at record level for the month of February, because of the weak yen and high energy prices they overshadow the record levels of imports and exports.

The Bank of Japan continues to say that inflation is only temporary, but tell that to the companies and households who have to live with inflation everyday.

 Because Japan had months and even year of trade surpluses, the 19th straight month of deficits might not be good but might be that bad too.

The February trade deficit was not that extreme, so the Japanese current account is not going to suffer too much.

Article:

Japan had a trade surplus of 530.5 billion yen with the United States, helped by increased shipments of cars, medicine and machinery.

Exports jumped 14.9 percent to 1.46 trillion yen and imports rose 6.6 percent to 925.6 billion yen.

Ideas:

It's good to look at the big picture such as overall world trade. And as the US economy seems to be improving and trade with the US is improving its good to be positive, and not focus on one aspect of trade.

A 14.9 percent increase in exports to the US is excellent and even a 6.6 percent increase in imports is good which shows trade between the two countries is robust and growing, even though the weak yen has pushed up import prices for the Japanese domestic economy.

Article:

Japan's trade balance came to a deficit of 209.8 billion yen with major trading partner China, with slightly more imports than exports.

Imports stood at 1.53 trillion yen, down 0.6 percent from a year earlier, compared with exports that fell 10.9 percent to 1.32 trillion yen.

With the rest of Asia, including China, Japan ran a trade surplus of 392.3 billion yen while a 119.7 billion yen deficit was registered with the European Union.

Ideas:

It's important,again to see the big picture, as trade with every country, every month might not show a trade surplus.

Trade with China, at the present time, is showing signs of challenges, and maybe still from the pandemic, logistics challenges and or other issue in China.

Yet, the rest of Asia and trade seems to be strong as there was a good trade surplus between Japan and the rest of Asia. 

But the EU is a different story as maybe the weak yen might be pushing EU imports to Japan into higher prices which might be causing the deficits with the EU.

So again, overall, global trade is still quite robust and even in China as the difference between imports and exports was not that significant.

Have a nice day and be safe!