Japan Trade Deficit Narrows in August

Japan’s trade deficit narrowed in August from the year before as costs for crude oil imports plunged and exports to the U.S. showed steady growth.

The customs data released Thursday showed a 4.2 percent drop from August a year earlier in the volume of exports for the world’s third-largest economy, likely mainly reflecting weakness in shipments to China.

But the value of exports rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier, to 5.9 trillion yen ($48.7 billion) while imports fell 3.1 percent to 6.5 trillion yen ($53.4 billion). The 569.7 billion yen ($4.7 billion) deficit was the largest in seven months.

The slowdown in China’s economy hit shipments of steel, auto parts and metalworking machinery hardest, pulling exports 4.6 percent lower than a year earlier. Japan’s imports from China rose 15 percent, causing its deficit to more than double, to 485.5 billion yen ($4 billion).

Exports to the U.S. rose 11 percent from a year earlier, mainly due to sales of cars and pharmaceuticals.

Via Mainichi

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza