Quarter-on-quarter, the growth of G7 exports stabilized at 0.8% while imports declined by -2.5% in the second quarter of 2009. Year-on-year, trade volume growth leveled-off at -23.3% for exports and -19.0% for imports.
Germany’s trade volumes largely remained unchanged in the second quarter 2009 with 0.9% for exports and 0.2% for imports. Compared with the second quarter 2008, trade remained well below the level of the previous year with -22.5% for exports and-12.7% for imports.
Quarter-on-quarter, United States exports fell 2.4% and imports 4.2%. Year-on-year, exports were down 19.6% and imports 21.3%.
Japan’s quarterly exports rose by 12.7% while imports declined 3.4%. The export recovery was the highest among all G7 countries. However, when compared to the second quarter 2008, exports fell by 33.9% and imports by 21.0%
Value growth of Trade in Goods and Services (Balance of Payments data)
Compared with the previous quarter, the value of exports and imports of goods and services in OECD countries, measured in seasonally adjusted current prices in US dollars, rose in the second quarter of 2009 by 2.0 % and 0.9 % respectively after three consecutive quarters of negative growth.
On a year-on-year basis, growth in the value of exports and imports of goods and services plunged, by 30.0 % for exports and by 31.8 % for imports in the second quarter. The sharp drop observed in Q1 2009 continued in Q2 2009, albeit less steeply.
In both comparisons, goods fell much more sharply than services, the overall trend for both goods and services being largely determined by the larger share of goods in total trade.
Latest monthly merchandise trade values 2009 suggest a bottoming out and slight recovery
In response to the current economic crisis, this section has been added to the quarterly OECD trade press release since April 2009 to include most recent monthly trends. This monthly view compares trends of the G7 and the constituent countries for the last twelve months for which data are available (including provisional data). In this release, the period under review is August 2008 – August 2009. Seasonally adjusted trade values, and not rates of change, are shown. The observed overall trend is remarkably similar across countries, backing up the notion of a synchronized trade collapse, followed by stabilization and slight recovery.
Since May 2009, G7 total merchandise trade values started to increase again after continuous decline since August 2008
This trend was particularly marked in Germany, Japan and France. It is noticeable that Japan’s net balance (exports minus imports) became positive since February 2009.
