Despite the doom and gloom and suggestions of terminal decline in the British and French electronics industries, both countries are still ahead of the emerging low-wage economies of the Far East in terms of value of exports – and each saw its share of world trade in electronic goods rise between 1984 and the first half of 1986. The performance of West Germany – led by major advances by Siemens in the US market – was even better, but the share of the US dropped sharply, by 3.1 percentage points, the main beneficiaries being Japan and West Germany. The figures – set out in the table below – come from the the American Electronics Association in Santa Clara, California, which is using the figures as a stick with which to beat whichever is the current bogey – This statistical appraisal of world exports shows clearly the shrinking of our country’s share of international electronics trade Association president Richard Iverson declares. It is an accurate indicator of the diminishing competitiveness of US high technology companies in the global marketplace. It is unfortunate that the latest figures are only for the first half of 1986 – the soaraway yen is certain to have had a substantial impact on Japan’s figures since then – with the biggest beneficiaries being the likes of South Korea and Taiwan, although the other developed countries will have benefitted as well. World Electronics Exports 1984 Full Year 1986 (six months)?Total Exports % of Total exports % of ($1,000m) total ($1,000m) total Japan 34.1 30.6 19.7 31.1 US 28.4 25.5 14.2 22.4 G Germany 10.4 9.4 7.2 11.3 UK 7.1 6.4 4.2 6.6 France 5.4 4.9 3.5 5.5 Taiwan 5.2 4.7 3.0 4.7 Singapore 5.1 4.5 2.7 4.3 S Korea 5.0 4.5 2.7 4.2 Netherlands 4.0 3.6 2.6 4.1 Italy 3.0 2.7 2.0 3.2 Canada 3.6 3.2 1.7 2.6 Totals 111.3 100.0 63.5 100.0
The Association notes that the statistics are based on a sample of the electronics exports of the 11 countries. All numbers are in dollars, converted at the exchange rate at the close of each period.
