Meme-bashing of the day: Spanish exports are not increasing

There is a meme going around, shared for instance by somebody like Mario Draghi, that Spanish exports are doing really well: “the impressive improvement in export performance in Ireland, Spain and Portugal“. But according to the Spanish national accounts, they don’t. During the last quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, ”Exportaciones de bienes y servicios” went down with -0,9% respectively -1,3% compared with the preceding quarter. I’m the first to state that in this time of rapid structural changes of the Spanish economy the seasonal adjustment factors may be less dependable than usual. But even despite this uncertainty there is no way that this can be called a strong increase of exports. Net exports (i.e. exports minus imports) are doing well, but that’s not because of (job creating) increases of exports but because of (job destructing) decreases of imports which are larger than the decreases of exports  (and I did mention already that Irish exports aren’t doing to well, either)…ARTÍCULO COMPLETO