Over the same period, however, exports of motor vehicles rose from under 2% to over 18% of the total.
The big jump in raw material prices in the 1970s kept import growth high despite lower economic growth. During the 1960s and 1970s, imports grew in tandem with exports, at an average annual rate of 15.4% during the 1960s and 22.2% during the 1970s. Please contact webmaster@wto.org giving details of the operating system and web browser you are using. For the next five years, Japan's trade surplus grew explosively, to a peak of US$82.7 billion in 1986.