Japan's Fumio Kishida government released the February 2024 trade data report on March 21, judging from the information released by Japan, Japan's overall trade has been in deficit for two consecutive months, and the trade with China is also in deficit for the same period, and it is a deficit for 35 months. Japan is a big manufacturing country, but today's Japan has challenges from China's manufacturing industry in many fields, especially in the automotive field in recent years, Japan bet on the wrong treasure in the field of new energy vehicles, because Japan is betting on hydrogen power, and finally China and the United States embarked on the track of electric vehicles, and now Japan wants to transform it has been quite difficult.
Japan not only has China's competition in the automobile industry, but also has been put in small shoes by the United States in the semiconductor industry, and the United States has not directly suppressed Japan's semiconductor industry, but wants Japan to impose sanctions on China in the semiconductor field. Although Japan is not as advanced in the field of lithography machines as the Netherlands, it is also the main supplier of mid-range lithography machines, and Japan has made many achievements in the field of optics. It is also because of its achievements in the field of optics that Japan has also made breakthroughs in lithography machine technology, thus achieving the status of Japan's lithography machine. However, because the United States does not allow China to develop the chip industry, Japan has banned the export of many lithography machines to China, which has affected Japan's export trade.
Japan is not only a supplier of mid-end lithography machines, but also the main producer and exporter of photoresist, when the United States launched a trade war against China, Japan is strongly supportive, for which it has also begun to increase sanctions against China, when Japan supports the United States, Japan's own interests have been lost, Japan can not export all photoresist products to China, so it is the same as the lithography machine, which directly impacts the scale of Japan's export trade. China is the world's largest chip application market, and at the same time, China is also mass-producing chips, but Japan has given up many businesses in order to support the U.S. strategy, in fact, it is Japan itself that suffers in the end.
Although Japanese companies are trying to expand their share of the Chinese market, the Japanese government of Fumio Kishida has actively cooperated with the "Indo-Pacific strategy" of the United States, which will force Japanese companies to join the ranks of sanctions against China. Although Japan's exports of semiconductor equipment and consumables to China have increased, due to the requirements of the United States, Japan cannot open up sales, which has a very embarrassing situation. In fact, Japanese companies have a lot of opinions about Japan's cooperation with the United States to increase sanctions against China, but they cannot go against the policy of the Japanese Kishida Fumio government.
Japan's trade deficit with China has been continuously presented, so it has repeatedly sounded the alarm bell for Japan, but the current Japanese Kishida Fumio government still goes all the way to the end and insists on increasing sanctions against China, which is obviously self-inflicted. China is already the world's factory, and has formed a crushing posture against Japan in many industries, and if Japan insists on confronting China, Japan's losses will be more and longer. In fact, Japan used to be the second largest economy after the United States, but today it has been overtaken by Germany as the fourth largest economy.