Blog Post #2

Blog Post #2

The country I chose to analyze was Japan. Japan's economy is known to be one of the biggest in the world, and this is very evident when looking at trade data. Japan has done a very good job of exporting a lot more than they import. This obviously will help their GDP, because their Net Exports are positive. However the way they report their exports and imports is very different from the way their trading partners report. They report almost $400 trillion in exports to China. However China only reports $70 trillion in imports from Japan. This is obviously a huge disparity, and brings up a lot of questions about the economies in both countries. Obviously, countries are likely to say they export more than they actually do, and say that they import less than they actually do. But a disparity of $330 is outrageous, and frankly a bit confusing. It’s amazing to see how almost all of their trading partners report grossly different numbers than Japan does. Most of their partners report numbers that are half as much as Japan does. This brings up a lot of questions about Japans economy. When looking at their imports and exports, you see exactly what you would expect. Their leading exports are vehicles and electronics, which is what they are known for. Their leading imports are mineral fuels and different types of oils and distillation products. This is because they rely very heavily on these resources for their economy, but they don’t have a ready supply of them.

The good that I chose to analyze was the exportation of vehicles. This was one of their leading exports, bringing in over $800 trillion dollars. Obviously Japan is known for having various large car companies, so it is no surprise that such a large portion of their economy and exports comes from the selling of vehicles. It is also not a big surprise that the United States is the country that they sell the most to, totaling up near $270 trillion. The next highest country is China, who spends $75 trillion on vehicles from Japan. These two statistics are no surprise at all. The U.S. uses more cars than any other country in the world and many of these cars are foreign. China is no surprise either because they are Japan’s closest trading partner. Overall Japan sells cars all over the world, and they are known for making good cars, and so this is why they make so much money off of cars.

 http://www.sas.com/software/visual-analytics/demos/un-comtrade-basic.html