Trade minister Ewa Björling's vision to double Swedish export is "almost impossible to achieve", professor Martin Flodén writes.

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In a move in SvD Brännpunkt (Svenska Dagbladet’s Opinion column) Swedish Minister for Trade Ewa Björling says Sweden's exports will double within five years.

The main motivation for expressing this ambition seems to be that "President Barack Obama recently unveiled his export initiative with the goal of doubling U.S. exports within five years. It is important that Sweden is on track."

In the U.S., where exports in 2009 stood at 11 percent of GDP it might be possible to double exports. In Sweden, exports amounted to 49 percent of GDP last year. A doubling seems thus almost impossible to achieve.

In addition, one wonders why we would crave an increase in exports rather than an increase in production for domestic consumption. In the U.S., of course low export and high consumption has long been seen as a problem (a part of so-called global imbalances).

Björling's move is especially surprising given that among other things, international cooperation organizations this spring have highlighted the current account surpluses in China, Germany and Japan as a problem that these countries must address by investing in increased domestic consumption to increase those countries' imports.

Since Sweden is a small country we have not been mentioned in this discussion, but it is worth pointing out that we have an even larger current account surplus to GDP ratio. The international "criticism" against China, Germany and Japan should therefore also include us. While I think this international criticism is a bit strange, it can hardly be right to now go for a dramatic increase in Swedish exports.

Martin Floden.
Professor, Department of Economics, Stockholm University

Published in collaboration with the blog Ekonomistas.