Japan Trade Balance: Updated April 9, 2025.

Japan logs 4.06 tril. yen current account surplus in February

Article source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250408/p2g/00m/0bu/010000c

Ideas:
Because Japan the Japanese economy is heavily focused on exports, the Bank of Japan and the Japanese government are always watching the current account situation. 

A countries current account is like a persons bank account as exports put money into the current account and imports take money out of the current account.

The weak Japanese yen might have increased the current account as the weak yen increases the profits of export companies so there might have been surge related to the weak yen along with maybe a strong demand for Japanese cars.

The decrease in imports might be due to the Japanese yen becoming a little less weak which means import prices were not a high as before.

But overall it might have just been a strong demand for exports as the country's good trade, meaning most products, had a lot of demand for them. 

Japan is resource-poor country and has to import much of what is needs and if the Japanese yen is weak it causes import prices to be even higher than usual.

Again, even primary income benefits from a weak Japanese yen as a weak yen improves investments overseas. As the Japanese yen is weak there might be even more investing in overseas markets than if the yen were stronger.

Before today there might have been some concern related to the current account and exports and the potential US tariffs. 

But T, the US president , today, instituted a 90 day freeze on the tariff situation, claiming many counties were willing to negotiate with the US administration on new tariffs.

So for now Japan might not have to worry that much about US tariffs and the current account situation might be stable for now. At least for the next three months.

If Japan had to deal with the US tariffs in the future Japanese exports, most likely Japanese cars, and their demand in the US might decrease a lot which means the current account could face challenges like its never seen before.

The current account brings money into the Japanese government and it decreases a lot that could potentially mean the debt to GDP ratio could be even worse which is the highest among OECD countries.

Have a nice day!