Japan's exports rose 23.2 percent in July and the quantity behind them rose 5.2, and the one destination where the volume genuinely moved is the United States

The value went up by nearly a quarter. The quantity went up by a twentieth.

Japan's Ministry of Finance published provisional trade statistics for July on 20 August. Exports came to ¥11,511,798m against ¥9,344,799m in July 2025, a rise of 23.2 percent. Imports came to ¥12,146,298m against ¥9,501,083m, a rise of 27.8 percent. The month closed with a deficit of ¥634,500m, against a deficit of ¥156,284m a year earlier.

Those are the figures that will travel. The release also carries a second table, twenty pages in, that separates them into a quantum index and a unit value index, which is the ministry's own division between how much moved and what it fetched, and on that table exports rose 5.2 percent by quantum and 17.1 percent by unit value while imports rose 1.2 percent by quantum and 26.3 percent by unit value. On the index levels, both set to 100 in 2020, Japan's export quantum stands at 112.2 and its export unit value at 180.0.

America is the exception in that table

Exports to the United States were ¥2,090,937m, up 22.0 percent. The quantum index behind them rose 20.4 percent and the unit value index rose 1.3 percent. Nothing else in the table looks like that. Exports to China rose 25.8 percent in value on a quantum rise of 3.2 percent, exports to the European Union rose 19.1 percent on a quantum rise of 6.8 percent, and exports to Asia as a whole rose 24.5 percent on a quantum rise of 4.7 percent.

Imports from the United States rose 58.0 percent, the largest move against any area in that table, with quantum up 29.3 percent and unit value up 22.2 percent. Japan's surplus with America came to ¥280,419m for the month. The release puts that 50.7 percent below the same month last year.

The European figures run the other way. Imports from the European Union fell 2.3 percent in value while their quantum fell 15.2 percent, so less arrived and it cost more.

The car count does not follow the car money

Cars are the largest single export line to America, and the counts are printed beside the money. Japan shipped 121,628 cars to the United States in July, which is 0.9 percent fewer than a year earlier, worth ¥543,455m, which is 30.3 percent more. Taking motor vehicles as a whole, the count rose 0.1 percent and the value rose 32.1 percent.

So the aggregate American quantum index rose 20.4 percent in a month when the number of cars did not move. Whatever lifted the quantity, it was not the vehicles.

Worldwide the pattern is milder and runs the same way: 460,850 cars, up 1.2 percent, worth ¥1,613,956m, up 20.8 percent.

The import side is fuel

The document prints a contribution column, which apportions each category's yen change against the previous year's total. Mineral fuels contributed 9.8 points of the 27.8 percent rise in imports. Within that, petroleum came to ¥1,408,930m, up 87.8 percent, on a quantity of 12,106 thousand kilolitres that rose 5.5 percent. Liquefied natural gas rose 22.5 percent in value on a quantity that fell 4.8 percent.

Two cautions sit on the face of the release. The figures are provisional. Exports are counted on an F.O.B. basis and imports on a C.I.F. basis, so the two sides of the balance are not measured on the same terms, and the totals are not seasonally adjusted.