China’s towering annual trade surplus surpassed $1 trillion for the first time last month, data showed today, as a sharp drop in shipments to the US was offset by surging exports to other major markets.<\/p>\n
Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump reached a tentative truce to their fierce trade war when they met in late October, agreeing a pause to painful measures that included lofty tit-for-tat tariffs.<\/p>\n
Exports have served as a key economic lifeline for China as trade and relations with the US and others have fluctuated in recent years.<\/p>\n
That has helped temper a prolonged debt crisis in the country’s vast property sector and sluggish domestic spending, which have weighed on growth and are among the most pressing issues facing Beijing.<\/p>\n
Exports climbed 5.9% year-on-year in November, reversing the slight decline recorded in October, the General Administration of Customs said. The reading was also above a Bloomberg forecast of 4% growth.<\/p>\n
The jump came despite a continued downturn in shipments to the US, which sank 28.6% to $33.8 billion in November, the data showed.<\/p>\n
“Weakness in exports to the US was more than offset by shipments to other markets,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics wrote in a note.<\/p>\n
“Exports are likely to remain resilient, thanks to trade rerouting and rising price competitiveness as deflation pushes down China’s real effective exchange rate,” Huang said.<\/p>\n
The surge in shipments last month added to the country’s ballooning annual trade surplus for the first 11 months of the year, which the Customs data showed hit $1.08 trillion in November.<\/p>\n
“China’s trade surplus this year has already surpassed last year’s level, and we expect it to widen further next year,” Huang wrote.<\/p>\n
But the imbalance has long been a sticking point for major Western trading partners.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron threatened in remarks published yesterday to impose tariffs on China if Beijing fails to reduce its massive trade surplus with the European Union.<\/p>\n
Macron – who concluded a state visit to China last week – warned in business daily Les Echos that “Europeans will be forced to take strong measures in the coming months”.<\/p>\n
In a further sign of China’s weak domestic consumption, the data showed today that imports rose 1.9% on-year in November – slower than the 3% increase predicted by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
“The rebound of export growth in November helps to mitigate the weak domestic demand,” Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note.<\/p>\n
“The economic momentum slowed in the fourth quarter partly driven by the continued weakness in the property sector,” he said.<\/p>\n
Xi and Trump agreed at the October meeting in South Korea to scale back sky-high tariffs on each other’s goods and blistering export controls that had sent shockwaves across global industries.<\/p>\n
The detente is due to expire late next year, allowing time for officials to reach a permanent deal – though experts warn such a breakthrough will be challenging.<\/p>\n
“There’s no guarantee this uneasy truce will last that long,” Lynn Song, ING chief economist for Greater China, said last week.<\/p>\n
“A lot needs to go right for the agreement to hold for the full year,” he wrote, adding that “it seems prudent to expect a softer external demand backdrop for next year.”<\/p>\n
China’s leaders – who are targeting overall growth this year of 5% – are expected to convene a key meeting this week focused on economic planning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China’s towering annual trade surplus surpassed $1 trillion for the first time last month, data showed today, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,179,18,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-221620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115683353193591743","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}