JAPAN'S trade deficit ballooned to a record US$83.4 billion in the last fiscal year through March as a surge in exports to the US failed to offset the impact from territorial tensions with China and weak demand from crisis-stricken Europe.

The customs figures released yesterday showed the US edging ahead of China as Japan's largest export market as America-bound exports jumped 10.4 percent from a year earlier to 11.4 trillion yen (US$116.3 billion). Exports to China, a major export point due to its status as Japan's biggest offshore manufacturing base, plunged 9.1 percent to 11.3 trillion yen.

China first supplanted the US as Japan's biggest export market in 2009, when demand sagged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

As then, exports of vehicles and machinery are playing the largest role in the shift in trade. Japan's exports of transport equipment, including vehicles and parts, to the US jumped 17 percent last fiscal year, while shipments of machinery and electrical equipment rose 24 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

Despite an overall 14 percent decline in exports to the European Union, Japan's exports of machinery and transport equipment to that region also surged by double-digit figures.

But exports of vehicles to China dropped 26 percent, while machinery exports dropped 22 percent and those of manufactured goods fell 10 percent.

Whether the renewed US status as Japan's biggest export market will persist remains unclear. In March, exports to China fell 2.5 percent from a year earlier but at 1.11 trillion yen they outpaced exports to the US at 1.1 trillion yen.

Overall, Japan posted its ninth straight monthly trade deficit in March, at 362.4 billion yen. But that was down from February's gap of 779.5 billion yen.