As South Korea's secondary battery and battery raw materials rely on imported from China, South Korea's trade deficit with China continues to expand, and China has become the source country of the first trade deficit in South Korea.
According to the Yonhap News Agency report on Wednesday (June 28), the South Korean Trade Association on the day of the "In the first half of the year trading trend and the conference of the second half of the trade and the business environment for the business environment", analyzed the annual trade revenue and expenditure of China.And changes in the structure of trade deficit in various products.
The South Korean Trade Association found that from June last year to May this year, South Korea's exports to China have grown negatively for 12 consecutive months.Last year, only 600 million US dollars (about S $ 814 million) was achieved in September last year, and the remaining deficit occurred.From January to May of this year, South Korea's trade deficit with China was US $ 11.8 billion. China changed from South Korea's largest source of surplus to the largest source of the deficit.
South Korea's trade surplus in China reached a peak of $ 55.6 billion in 2018, but due to the increase in China's self -sufficient self -sufficiency rate, South Korea's trade surplus in China narrowed to $ 29 billion in 2019. Last year, again last year again.It was reduced to $ 1.2 billion and turned into a deficit this year.The analysis believes that the decisive cause of the expansion of the trade deficit in China is the expansion of the secondary battery and its key ingredients -fine chemical raw material deficit.
According to the Korean Trade Association, most of the domestic low -cost electric vehicle models in South Korea use Most of the lithium iron phosphate batteries made in China.With the increase in battery imports, South Korea has continued to expand its trade deficit in lithium -ion battery in China since 2021.The increase in imports such as lithium hydroxide and front drives required to manufacture secondary batteries also affect the trade deficit.
From January to May this year, South Korea accounted for 12.4%of other fine chemical raw materials such as lithium hydroxide in China, and the secondary battery deficit accounted for 10.1%, and the two accounted for about 22.5%.The highest proportion of the trade deficit in China is the highest.During the same period, 10 of the 16 types of secondary battery raw materials and materials were China.Most of these raw materials and materials are as high as 80%to 100%.The 16 kinds of raw materials to China were 3.57 billion US dollars, reaching more than twice the same category's external deficit ($ 1.4 billion) during the same period.
In addition, South Korea's future core resources such as permanent magnet (85.8%) and rare earth (84.6%) also rely on China.In this regard, the Trade Association stated that South Korea is necessary to actively participate in the US inflation reduction bill, the European Union's key raw material bill, and other countries to alleviate excessive dependence on China.At the same time, in order to ensure the controlling and controllable battery and mineral supply, resource mining and international cooperation should be strengthened.
