Japanese exports shrank at the quickest pace in two years in December as shipments to China tumbled, adding the world’s third-largest economy to the growing list of Asian nations reporting a fall in the metric at the end of 2018.
The year-on-year drop of 3.8 per cent after two months of growth was double the pace forecast by economists surveyed by Reuters and marked the sharpest fall since October 2016, according to preliminary data from Japan’s finance ministry.
Exports to Asia shrank 6.9 per cent with those to China, Japan’s largest market in the region, falling 7 per cent and shipments to Hong Kong and South Korea down 17.3 per cent and 11.6 per cent, respectively. Shipments to the US, Japan’s largest market globally, rose 1.6 per cent.