Japan: Machinery Orders and a (Potential) Recovery

WSJ details:

Japanese core machinery orders fell 3.7% in January after unusually strong growth in the previous month, the government said Wednesday, suggesting a full-fledged recovery in business investment is still some way off.

The findings suggest it may take more time before Japan's capital investment—which accounts for 15% of gross domestic product and is a pillar of domestic demand—starts recovering steadily and strongly. Core orders are considered a reliable gauge of future capital investment, and exclude often-volatile orders for ships and those from electronic power companies. The machinery orders were down 1.1% in January from the previous year.

Still, January's decline may be too moderate to dispel the view that demand for machinery is stabilizing. Previous data show core orders gained 0.5% on quarter in October-December for the first rise in seven quarters, and there are signs that the improvement in exports—a key incentive for manufacturers to invest—is gaining steam.

The below chart details the past 20 years of Japanese machinery order data in an attempt to avoid the short-term noise (while down in January, machinery orders were up more than 20% in December).



As indicated above, Japan has successfully relied heavily on exports in the past (at the beginning of last decade) to get their economy out of what was a more than a decade long period of slow / no growth. After peaking in mid-2007, the rug was taken out from under them when the continued lack of internal demand was met by a crash in external demand.

The key question is can the Japanese economy do it again? Business Week details news out of China, that on the margin, suggests they might:

China’s trade surplus shrank to the lowest level in a year in February as a surge in imports signaled the nation may start to outshine the U.S. as a destination for the world’s goods.

Imports rose a more-than-estimated 44.7 percent from a year ago, the customs bureau reported on its Web site today. The surplus was $7.61 billion, and exports gained 45.7 percent.

While the bulk of these imports are in the form of commodities, China is increasing their demand for "value-add" goods on the margin. If they (and other emerging Asian countries) continue to do so, Japan may have a shot...

Source: ESRI