County Still Big Exporter of Electronics, Instruments

Orange County manufacturers continue to be a major worldwide source of precision electronics and scientific instruments, according to a U.S. Commerce Department study of annual exports.

Despite its relatively small physical size, the county remained the 13th largest exporter among the nation’s metropolitan areas last year, shipping $8.3 billion in goods to other countries.

Japan remains the county’s largest trade partner, taking in $1.51 billion in locally produced goods. But Mexico--which bought $1.18 billion worth of goods from Orange County manufacturers--surpassed Canada for the No. 2 spot.

And while exports nationally slowed down a bit--including a 1.2% dip in the value of goods shipped from the Los Angeles-Long Beach region--Orange County’s total increased by 3.3%.

The biggest gains were in the value of goods shipped to Mexico, up 23%; Japan, up 11%; and Canada, up 3% at $1.03 billion. A sluggish European economy caused the value of exports from Orange County to drop by 16% to $1.92 billion, the recently released report shows.

Japan alone accounts for about half of the county’s exports to Asian markets. Shipments to the next largest customer, South Korea, rose 17% to $537 million, while the value of goods shipped to Hong Kong fell 5% to $243 million and shipments to China dropped 10% to $132 million.

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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.