I've previously talked and written about how the visible trends in NE Asia's exports and G3 Imports have exited the pandemic in far stronger condition than expected. In August, for example, NE Asia's exports were up 2.9% yoy, which may not sound great, but achieving a positive yoy has been rare over the last 18 months.
We've now got enough data for September to be confident that this strength is going to be maintained. Today we got Japan's 20-day data for September, which showed exports down 1.9% yoy in yen terms, but with a monthly movt up 3.5SDs above historic seasonal trends. In dollar terms, these exports were down only 0.3% yoy, compared with a fall of 15.1% in August.
Earlier, we'd learned that S Korea's Sept exports rose 7.7% yoy in dollar terms, with the monthly movt 2SDs above historic seasonal trends, with exports to US up 23.2% yoy.
We also had data from Taiwan. Taiwan has been the conspicuous front-runner in NE Asia's trade recovery, and in September its exports rose 9.4% yoy - and whilst the monthly movt was only on-trend, this was still the highest yoy growth since early 2018 (excepting CNY affected months).
Japan, S Korea and Taiwan account for a third of NE Asia's exports, so unless China springs a really nasty shock on us, September is going to be another month of unusually strong export growth for NE Asia. And there's no reason to believe China's exports are going down - its September PMIs, included a 1.7pts rise in the export order subindex to 50.8 , the first 50+ result since Dec 2019, and the strongest since May 2018.
