JAPAN'S EXPORT TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 124, 29 May 1939, Page 4

JAPAN'S EXPORT TRADE.

SERIOUS DECLINE. "YEN" BLOC" MARKETS. The value of Japanese exports in the first halt of 1937 \v;is almost exactly double those in the first, half of 1!»2, l>ut in the second half of 1938 they were only 20 per cent higher. It is in this comparison that the cx[il,ination of th-3 proposal to import raw wool earmarked for export after manufacture is to be found. Japanese efforts to increase the country's export trade to markets other than those of the '"Yen Bloc." ill order to improve the country's critical foreign exchange position, have proved a failure. But, coupled with considerable sacrifices in prices quoted to foreign buyers, tiiey have at least served to .stabilise Japan's export trade on the much reduced level ot the first half of 1938. the "Manchester Guardian Commercial" points out. The following table shows that all the spectacular advance of Japan's export trade to foreign countries since the Manchurian incident, in 1932, bas been wiped out. JAPANESE EXPORTS. (To foreign countries other than those of the -Yen Bloc") Monthly Million average yen 1»32 105.3 1!'33 129.8 1934 147.-4 1935 IT2 7 1936 182.0 1937 (first half) 209.3 •1037 (second half) 184.0 • 1038 (first half) i •1938 (second half) i^e.B •Since the outbreak of war. Japan's foreign exchange income from exports, therefore, was about 36 per cent lower in 1938 than in 1937, and, although imports from foreign countries were reduced to an even larger extent—from a monthly average of 284,900,000 yen 'in 1937 to 174,900,000 yen in the monthly average of 1938," about 39 per cent—the unfavourable trade balance of the full year of 1938 still amounts to approximately 800,000,000 yen. A further reduction of imports, which would > seriously endanger the execution of Japan's war and armament plans, can only be avoided if Japan should be able to bring about a fresh increase of exports. Japanese competition last year diminished considerably as far as the volume ot Japanese sales in the world's markets were concerned, although not quite to the extent which the above figures of Japan's total exports to foreign countries would indicate. Her sales to the "Yen Bloc" markets increased considerably last year, and have to be considered. In China, especially in the northern provinces, where Japan is busy creating an admuiistrative monopoly for herself, purely commercial competition between Britain and Japan is etill a possibility, although only to u limited extent. It is significant of the urgency with which Japan has to push her exports in order to procure a minimum of the import aoods which she requires in her present war— iis well as for the strain which Japan's economic activities in the "Yen Bloc" countries are causing in her national economy—that even such items as foodstuffs, which are hardly sufficient for Japan's own wants, and machinery and metal manufactures, which are definitely insufficient, had actually to be exported in greater quantities in 1938 than ir. 1097