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Japan’s Trade Deficit Problems: A Signal About Global Recovery

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Japanese government officials say that they may be seeing a slowing in the bad trend for the nation’s imports and exports. That does not mean much. The March figures were especially poor. Exports fell by 46% from the same month last year.

Since Japan is the world’s second largest economy by GDP, if it is seeing such a rapid drop in exports, the countries on the other side of that equation are not showing signs of recovery either. Those countries include the US, UK, and China.

Since Japan relies so heavily on exports, it is not a bad proxy for global business and consumer demand, especially if its results are taken with those from China. Since both countries are posting  what may be record drops in their business from abroad, it is another clear sign that the recessions in most large nations are not leveling off. In fact, they are picking up speed, at least as of last month.

Japan cannot export what the world won’t buy and the world is not buying much.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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