Japan posts strong export numbers
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What are Japan's recent export figures and why are they significant?
Some good news for Japan's sluggish economy as exports jump. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. Good morning, I'm Nick Koreshi. It's the start of the Lunar New Year this week, and one country in Asia seems to be doing very well because of the strong demand ahead of the holidays. The BBC's Surinjana Tiwari joins us. Hi, Surinjana.
Hi there.
So Japan's exports have marked their biggest jump in more than three years. What is driving this growth?
This week is the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays and obviously Japan and China are major trading partners, even though they often have frosty relations diplomatically. But these numbers come from January and it shows that Japan's exports were boosted by the strong demand all around Asia for its products. And this is really interesting because it actually follows separate data this week that showed that the Japanese economy has only just limped back to growth in the fourth quarter of last year, significantly missing market forecasts because of weaker exports and capital expenditure as well. Now, in these figures, exports to China actually jumped 32%, which is why experts and economists are saying that this is because of the demand ahead of the Lunar New Year.
But exports bound for the European Union were also up by 30%, so a real front-loading.
Not such good news. We learn that Chinese visits to Japan plummeted by some 60% in January, according to official figures from the Japanese Tourist Board.
That's right. And that's why it's so interesting that the exports are actually up because Japan and China are in the middle of one of those tensions between the two countries. And that's largely over comments that the Japanese prime minister had made about Taiwan. And China, of course, was upset by that. And so what we're seeing is a lot of group tours being stopped worldwide. from China into Japan. And as you mentioned, Japan's tourist body has said that in January, they're seeing a slump of 60.7% of Chinese visitors going to Japan. Now, there are many areas where China and Japan trade on. But of course, tourism is a huge area for both countries, both Chinese tourists going into Japan
What factors are driving the growth in Japan's exports?
Japanese tourists also going into China. But this just shows, you know, even though those exports are good, there are other areas of the trading relationship that there are still quite a lot of trade tensions going on where exporters push out those products before a certain period of time.
Now, President Trump has announced some of the investments that Japan plans to make as part of the US-Japan trade deal. Just outline what some of them are.
That's interesting because Japan's exports were hit by the US tariffs before the two countries did agree on that trade deal. And that trade deal included a colossal $550 billion pledge by Japan to invest in the US. The problem was we weren't sure of the details and I don't think they knew either. So now we know that $36 billion will go towards three infrastructure projects. projects in the US. Japan will be working with the Americans on a natural gas facility in Ohio, a deep water oil export facility in the Gulf of Mexico, and a synthetic diamond manufacturing facility. Now, Donald Trump, posting on Truth Social, said the deal was excellent and that the scale of these projects are so large that they could not be done without one very special word, tariffs.
Sirin Jano, very good to talk to you on Marketplace. Thanks for your time.
Thanks a lot.
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