Euro zone swings to trade surplus y/y in July

Containers and cars are loaded on freight trains at the railroad shunting yard in Maschen near Hamburg September 23, 2012. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File photo

BRUSSELS  – The euro zone swung to an unadjusted 6.5 billion euro trade surplus in July from a 36.3 billion euro deficit a year earlier as costs of energy imports plunged and exports of manufactured goods surged, data showed on Friday.

The European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said the unadjusted trade balance in the January-July period also became positive showing a 2.7 billion euro surplus, compared with a 188.1 billion euro deficit in the same period of 2022.

Adjusted for seasonal swings, the trade surplus in July was 2.9 billion euros, down from 8.6 billion in June.

A massive fall in the trade deficit in energy of the 27-nation European Union had the biggest impact on the results, with the trade gap down to 247.7 billion euros in the first seven months of the year from 352.3 billion in the same period of 2022.

At the same time the EU trade surplus in manufactured goods almost doubled to 215.9 billion in the January-July period from 115.1 in the same period last year.

The EU’s trade gap with Russia, which used to be the bloc’s main energy supplier before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, shrunk to 9.2 billion euros in the seven months of this year from 105 billion last year.

The EU’s trade gap with China, its second biggest trading partner after the United States, also continued to shrink to 174.7 billion euros in the first seven months from 220.3 billion in the same period of 2022.