The Japanese economy encountered a major crisis in 2022. The appearance is the sharp drop in the yen exchange rate. What state does it have? The yen-USD exchange rate against the US dollar has dropped by 25% this year, and a dollar is close to being exchanged for 145 to 150 yen. From the perspective of exchange rate, Japan's total GDP 4 today is probably less than US$4 trillion. Japan's per capita GDP 4 is already lower than South Korea and Taiwan Province, and Japan's total GDP has hit a new decline in the past 30 years.
In the past, we often commented on the Japanese economy that its economy was stagnant for 30 years of lost 30 years, because in the 1990s, the total economic output of Japan had reached 5 trillion US dollars, but now it has returned to 4 trillion US dollars. In the future, we will describe the Japanese economy. The previous 30 years were stagnant for 30 years, and the next 10 and 20 years may be 10 and 20 years of sinking downward.
Many people say that when we comment on the economy, we cannot just look at the exchange rate. Exchange rates cannot reflect a country's economic situation. Short-term exchange rate fluctuations are related to many factors, such as whether the US dollar raises interest rates in , and whether the US dollar has become too strong.
But from a long-term perspective, the value of a country's local currency must be a manifestation of the country's economic fundamentals. So when the yen continues to fall, we can also see that there are indeed big problems in the Japanese economy, so in the last episode, we all said that the UK's " Financial Times " pointed out without hesitation that Japan may not be able to support itself in the future.
History, Japan is a typical example of a small land with a large population. Although Japan's economy has achieved certain achievements after the Meiji Restoration , the narrow land cannot even support 30 million people. Therefore, Japan immigrated a large number of overseas countries, many people went to Southeast Asia to make a living, and many people even immigrated to Brazil . That is, Japan's industry was successful after World War II, so Japan's narrow land only raised more than 100 million people.
But this is because Japan can create a large number of industrial products and sell them all over the world to make profits, and then it uses precious foreign exchange to buy food and daily necessities. Why does the Financial Times say that Japan may not be able to support itself in the future? Because Japan's grain self-sufficiency rate does not even have 40%. When you can earn a lot of foreign exchange in the past, it is okay for you to support yourself.
But in the future, if there is a big problem with your export, you won’t make that much money, how can you support yourself? This is definitely not an alarmist statement, because Japan has had a trade deficit for 13 consecutive months. The economic form of Japan in the past was actually very simple. It had no energy, no resources, and it only had people. It imported a large amount of energy and resources from countries around the world. Then, relying on the charm of industrial turning stones into gold, it created a large number of industrial finished products and sold them all over the world to earn foreign exchange.
At that time, Japan was a country with a trade surplus. Every year, the surplus was getting more and more, and Japan became richer and richer. Therefore, it was not a big deal to purchase grain from overseas. Since this year, Japan has had a full-year trade deficit. What is more important is that this trend will become more and more serious in the future. Therefore, the Japanese economy faces today not a simple problem of currency depreciation, but how much damage will Japan's sharp export decline in the future damage to its economy.
In fact, over the past few years, we have slowly witnessed the complete decline of Japanese goods in our country. To be honest, a large number of Japanese goods have poured into the Chinese market like a tide in the past few decades, and a whole generation of Chinese people have very myths about Japanese goods.Today you can see how many Japanese goods are still on sale. It may be in 5 to 10 years. If the public launches the so-called boycott of Japanese goods, they will suddenly find that this activity is difficult to carry out because we can't see Japanese goods around us. How can I boycott it?
Of course, some people say that Japan's mobile phones, computers and home appliances are in decline. That's because those things are not profitable. Japan has its own flagship products. What? car. What we want to talk about today is Japanese cars. When Japanese cars were the most glorious, they beat the three major North American auto companies in the North American market. It was the success of the automobile field that ultimately created the glory of Japan in the 1970s and 1980s.
And in the Chinese market, Japanese cars are indeed selling very well. We say that Japan is a powerful automobile country. I am afraid no one will question it, but this does not mean that there is no chance in my country's automobile industry. In previous programs, we said that China's automobile industry will make three major steps in three years. Last year, we officially surpassed South Korea to become the top three countries in the world's automobile exports. This year, we are likely to surpass Germany, and next year our goal is to surpass Japan.
, do you know? Sometimes this happens much faster than we imagined. For example, in the past August, my country's total automobile exports exceeded 300,000 vehicles in a month. You should know that in the past few years, we may have exported only hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. However, in August, Japan, Germany and South Korea did not export more than 300,000 vehicles. In other words, in a single month, we were actually the country with the largest automobile exporter in the world in August.
Although we are still a little worse than Japan in 2022, the trend has already emerged. This year we only need to achieve the goal of surpassing Germany. The goal of surpassing Japan is left for next year. Many people may say whether we have seized the electric car trend. We definitely have huge advantages in the field of electric vehicles.
But you can check the numbers. Today, a large number of cars exported by my country are actually traditional fuel vehicles. Many friends may also say whether there are many joint venture factories in my country to build factories, so we have exported a large number of joint venture cars ? Of course this is not the case. The joint venture car manufacturer has a production line in its own country. How could it be possible to hand over half of the profits to its partners in our country?
More than 90% of the large number of models we export every year and every month are our own brands. Of course, 10% to 20% of these are Tesla , and this principle is also very simple. Because Tesla is now facing the problem of serious insufficient production capacity, of course it must rely on Chinese factories to produce a large number of cars.
But overall, the cars we export are mainly own brands. Why is Japanese automobile exports facing a downturn now? You can think about how Japanese automobiles succeed in the North American market. The reason is very simple, two words are cheap.
When many of us buy Japanese cars, we mainly value their advantages. They are strong, durable, cheap, and low fuel consumption. The residual value of second-hand is high. Before the 1970s, the oil price is very, very low. For wealthy Americans, they like luxury cars with 5.0 and 6.0 displacements, but of course, this kind of car also has very high fuel consumption.
In the past, when oil prices were cheap, Americans could afford it, but after oil crisis, oil prices soared, and Americans could not afford this oil money. Therefore, the economical Japanese cars came into being and took the lead. Even for Americans, they should consider whether to buy a Japanese car when buying a car. The fuel consumption is really low and durable, unlike the stupid, big, black and thick-sized American cars, so Japanese cars eventually seized the North American market.
But the problem is that with the continuous development of the Japanese economy and the continuous increase in artificial intelligence in Japan, there will always be cheaper models to compete with Japan. For example, Korean models. South Korea is simply developing step by step like Japan, but Korean cars may be cheaper, so Korean cars have also seized a lot of space with affordable Korean cars.
Then of course our cars are cheaper, so today we see that in many low-income countries, Chinese models are popular because we are discounted and our fuel consumption is low enough, and our prices are low enough. Just like in the home appliance market, computer market, and mobile phone market, we keep squeezing Japanese and Korean companies away, as long as we can produce sufficient discounted products, and the quality is not worse than that of Japan and South Korea.
Of course, we can get the market share. Today, in addition to the competition between Chinese and Korean models in terms of cost, Japan also faces another major problem that is the rise of electric vehicles.
In the past two years, electric cars have replaced fuel vehicles very quickly. In previous programs, we said that in the field of luxury cars, electric cars have caused Mercedes-Benz BMW and Audi, a luxury brand, to lose its brand added value and brand advantages. Why? Because everyone thinks that in the era of fuel vehicles, your brands have a very strong historical accumulation and very strong technical barriers, so everyone is willing to choose these luxury cars.
However, in the electric vehicle field, these brands have also launched many electric vehicles, and they are not selling well. In other words, their history over the past century has not accumulated in electric vehicles. This is the luxury vehicle field. But have you ever thought that the field that electric vehicles actually hit the most is not luxury brands but ordinary brands, but economical cars with relatively low prices? Why?
Because consumers who buy economical cars are more sensitive to prices and care more about fuel consumption. If you buy a car worth 500,000 or 1 million, the sales staff may tell you how advanced its design concept is and how high its brand value is. I guess few people will tell you that this luxury car with a capacity of over one million is low enough, which is of course also an advantage. But the question is, if you buy a car worth 1 million, do you care about burning more fuel?
However, when you buy a car worth 100,000 or even 50,000 yuan, of course you have to consider the fuel. The fuel consumption is probably the most expensive end of your car. In the past, when Japanese cars competed with American cars, it could be said that my fuel consumption was low. American cars cost 100 kilometers and I only cost 6 oil for 100 kilometers. However, people's electric cars do not consume 100 kilometers. The electricity bill is much lower than your fuel bill, so the cost advantage of Japanese cars is gone in front of electric cars.
In the past, many people bought Japanese cars. The second-hand residual value is high. What does it mean? After driving this Japanese car for a few years, it can still be sold at a relatively high price in the second-hand market, which is higher than that of American and German cars. For price-sensitive consumers, the high second-hand residual value is also an important reason for me to choose Japanese cars. However, why many people choose Japanese used cars is not because it is cheap enough.
You have bought used cars. It is just a simple transportation tool, and there is no showing off value. Of course, it is cost-effective for me to buy which one is cheaper. However, when electric cars rise, due to the absence of cost advantages, the second-hand residual value of Japanese cars will also be greatly reduced. In other words, the cost advantages that Japanese cars are proud of in the future and the high residual value of used cars will be gone under the blow of electric cars, so it is no wonder that Japanese cars are becoming more and more difficult to sell.
Last year, Toyota CEO Toyota Akio kept wailing. He said that after the arrival of the electric car era, Japanese cars will face a devastating blow, and thousands of supporting manufacturers of Japan's seven major automobile brands, millions of industrial workers will fall into the abyss due to the arrival of the electric car era.
To be honest, many people think that electric cars completely replace fuel vehicles. This is probably 10 years later and 20 years later. The Japanese economy, the Japanese automobile industry may still have a good space for development in 10 years and 20 years. Moreover, many people in this world still love fuel vehicles, but the problem is that once a trend is formed, its development speed will exceed all of us imagined.
If all of us confirm that fuel vehicles will no longer be sold in 20 years, how many people will consider fuel vehicles when buying cars? The accelerated development of electric vehicles in recent years actually confirms this fact. Not only many Chinese people have begun to take the initiative to consider electric vehicles when buying cars. In the future, global automobile consumers will probably think about it when buying cars. I want to buy a future or a past, so the drop speed of Japanese cars may be faster than all of us expected.
So by that time, Japan even lost its last pillar industry, what kind of state will the Japanese economy face in the future? So we talk about why the value of the yen has fallen rapidly since this year. This is probably because investors around the world have seen many uncertainties and risks facing the Japanese economy in the future, so the yen has lost its status as a safe-haven currency, and will the Japanese economy continue to fall like the yen?
