Letters to the Editor: Chile and Japan: Solid Partnership
Your article on Chile-Japan trade, "Chilean Firms Suffer Pain From Japanese Recession," is engaging and encouraging, yet its focus on short-term setbacks may stand a different reading if viewed from a global, longer-term perspective. To Chile, trading with Japan is part of a broader Asia positioning effort whose scope reaches beyond short-term issues. The two nations have a century-old record of cooperation and trade. Distance has been no object to doing business. Japan, now the second most important destination for global Chilean exports, has ranked as one of our four largest trading partners ever since 1970. About 13% of all Chilean goods currently sold abroad are bought by Japan.</br></br>The success of Chile-Japan trade links warrants further analysis. Our partnership is far from having peaked, and Japan is far from a market lacking in possibilities. True, the dollar value of sales to Japan fell 28% in 1998, but a whopping 82% of this (U.S. $593 million) was simply due to lower ore and copper prices. A softer market for just five items -- mineral ores, copper cathodes, dressed pine boards, gold, and fish in brine -- accounted for 100% of the dollar drop in sales to Japan. Such is the predicament of commodity sellers today, a predicament that is hard on us all, not just Japan.</br></br>Still, the record for 1998 shows an 81% increase in the diversity of products exported to Japan over 1997, as well as 27 firms newly joining the ranks of bilateral trade. In other words, despite Japan's downturn, trade with Chile, save for a few, admittedly major items, continues to thrive.</br></br>Hector Casanueva</br></br>Director, ProChile