East Asia Econ

Japan – cycle still strengthening

Takaichi's huge win comes when the cycle is looking stronger, with real wages close to rising, manufacturing sentiment improving and bank lending strong. This should give the BOJ confidence, and, with the current account surplus in 2025 reaching the highest level in forty years, also help the JPY.

Paul Cavey

Feb 9, 2026 • 3 min read

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Last week, next week

The fundamental themes for the region are rising external surpluses, improving manufacturing cycles, and lessening deflation in China. That mix should be helping currencies. The offsetting factors to be monitoring are politics in Japan, flows, and global dynamics around tech and the USD.

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East Asia Today

Korea's December BOP data show a big CA surplus – but even bigger capital outflows. Japan's exports data for the first 20 days of January perked up, but consumption in December slowed. Also today, a link to the EAE data API, which now allows access to almost 700,000 data series.

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East Asia Econ Data API

Formally launching my data API, which now allows access to almost 700,000 series covering China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, with monthly, quarterly and annual data.