How much of the Greece trade deficit reflects into it's public debt? Each year, Greece is importing about two times as much as it's exporting. In some years, even three times more. How much of that is converted into public debt?
Assuming that the Greek citizens and companies are not sitting on large amounts of cash reserves to afford to spend double the money they make and they can't make such huge credits to cover such expenses (and that looks very much to be the case), the only way to cover that deficit that I can think of is this: The government doesn't have enough money to pay the people working in the public sector, then it borrows money from external creditors, making public debt, then it pays the wages of those workers, and then the workers buy imported goods and at the end of the year, Greece imports more than it exports. And then it's the public debt that supports/fuels that huge trade deficit.
I can't imagine another way of having trade deficit than having reserves or by making private or public debt. But maybe there are such ways and that's why I'm asking.
Later edit: I managed to squeeze another example out of my brains: The Greek ship owners (who don't pay taxes) make such huge profits that they can afford to import materials and technology that's worth 35 billion Euro each year, so they can build more ships for their business. They build the ships and they keep them, doing a lot of imports and no exports. But that works only if their shipping services do not count as exports.