A Comparative Analysis Of The Reasons For Qingdao And Japan'S Decline In US Exports

The US subprime crisis, which broke out in the summer of 2007, made the US economy face a "serious recession" risk.

In view of the important position of the United States in the world economy, all countries are paying close attention to the impact of their subprime crisis on their country.

Since 2008, Japan's exports to the United States have dropped by 6% compared with the same period last year, which is similar to that of our city's exports to the United States, a year-on-year decrease of 5.4%.

The United States is the largest export market in our city, and its market prospect directly affects the export trend of our city.

Because there are many differences between Japan's exports to the United States and the commodity structure, consumer groups and market channels of our city, the reasons for the decline are also different.

First, the analysis of Qingdao's exports to the United States shows that the trade between Qingdao and the United States basically remained stable in 2007, with trade volume reaching US $6 billion 461 million.

Among them, Qingdao exported $5 billion 349 million to the United States, accounting for 20% of the total exports of the city, up 9.3% from the same period last year. Qingdao imported 1 billion 112 million dollars from the United States, accounting for 6.6% of the total import volume of the city, an increase of 0.9% over the same period last year.

In 2007, the proportion of Qingdao's exports to the United States decreased slightly (from 21.2% in January to 20% in December, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points), and the proportion of imports increased slightly (from 6% in January to 6.6% in December, by 0.6 percentage points).

The cumulative export growth over the past month has remained above 8%.

Since 2008, our exports to the US have declined for two consecutive months.

In January, our city exported $392 million to the US, down 2.6% from the same period last year, accounting for 17.9% of the total export volume of our city.

In 1-2, our city exported $751 million to the US, down 5.4% from the same period last year, accounting for 22.9% of the total export volume of our city.

From the perspective of the main commodity structure of Qingdao's exports to the United States, it mainly focuses on the low added value of daily necessities, clothing, pport, footwear, food and so on, and the mode of trade is mainly processing trade.

In the 1-2 months of 2008, the export volume of these commodities increased at a low speed or declined, and the clothing increased by only 0.8% over the same period last year (42.2% in 2007, 1-2 in 2007); the export of pport vehicles decreased by 21% compared with the same period last year; the export of footwear decreased by 7.9% compared with the same period last year; the growth of electrical and electronic products increased by 1.3% compared with the same period last year.

From the perspective of trade, our exports to the US mostly accounted for 60.5% of the processing trade, while exports to the US processing trade decreased by 11.9% in the 1-2 months, which affected 7.7 percentage points of our exports to the United States.

In the same period last year, processing trade exports grew by 33.2%, and exports to the United States increased by 16.2 percentage points.

From the perspective of export enterprises, the export of foreign-funded enterprises in our city accounts for 67.8% of the total exports to the US.

Most of the foreign-funded enterprises took the form of processing trade. Therefore, in 1-2 months, the export volume of foreign-funded enterprises in the city decreased by 11.1% compared with the same period last year, a decrease of 51.5 percentage points over the same period last year.

Among them, Xindu Ricoh (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. exported 12 million 260 thousand US dollars, down 23.9% compared with the same period last year.

Tai Guang and Shiyuan two exports of larger footwear exports to the United States decreased by 28.1% and 39.1% respectively over the same period last year.

Two, Japan's analysis of exports to the United States, according to Japan's Ministry of finance March 26th trade statistics express, with the decline in the US economic climate index, in February, Japan's exports to the United States decreased by 6% over the past six months.

Among them, the main export commodity vehicle decreased by 8.9%, the two wheeled power car exports decreased by 16.6%.

In addition to the sluggish consumption in the US and the decrease in exports, Japan's construction and mining machinery exports to the United States also fell 28.1% year-on-year in the wake of the US housing market downturn.

The main reason for Japan's reduction in exports to the United States is that the rise in oil prices has led to the increase in production costs and prices of Japanese enterprises. The two is the impact of the US subprime crisis, and the downturn in the real estate market has led to a slowdown in US economic growth.

To sum up, compared with Japan's decline in exports to the United States, the decline in exports to the US has different reasons.

Japan's exports of American goods are mainly related to automobile, construction and mining machinery, which are closely related to the consumption and real estate of the United States, and are greatly affected by the subprime crisis.

The commodities exported to the United States mainly focus on textile, clothing, footwear, carts, electronic appliances and other necessities. The elasticity of demand is relatively low, which is not affected by the subprime crisis. The main reason for the decline is that the export tax rebate rate has been reduced since last year, the adjustment of trade and trade policy and the appreciation of RMB have led to the increase in production costs of some enterprises in our city. Some customers have shifted their orders to lower cost areas, and some of them have been pferred to Southeast Asian market.

From the present point of view, this decline is less affected by the US subprime crisis and has little correlation.

However, it does not rule out that with the further spread of the subprime crisis to the production sector and the greater pressure of RMB appreciation, the adverse effects of the subprime crisis on our exports will gradually increase.