More surprisingly, we also saw China’s import demand accelerate to 7.4% YoY, up from 1.3% in August. This growth represented a 17-month high, and came as a surprise given the recent signs of softness in domestic demand. Through the first three quarters of the year, imports contracted -1.1% YoY ytd to $1.90tn. <\/p>\n
Commodities imports may have contributed to the import growth surprise in September. In YoY terms, iron (13.4%) and copper (24.4%) both saw strong growth. Agricultural imports as a whole grew 5.7% YoY, a little slower than headline growth. Within this category, though, imports of meat (24.7%), fruits (10.9%), and edible oils (9.6%) all displayed strength.<\/p>\n
Commodities aside, the import categories which have performed well in previous months continued to see strong growth in September as well. Hi-tech imports (14.1%), semiconductors (14.1%), and aircraft (201.3%) all outperformed the headline growth in September. The continued outperformance of these categories is unsurprising given the policy focus.<\/p>\n
The impact of the US-China trade spat can be seen in China’s import profile as well. Imports from the US slumped to -16.1% YoY in September amid reports of halting soybean purchases. Instead, imports from the EU (9.4%), Japan (20.9%), South Korea (13.1%), Africa (22.4%), and Latin America (17.9%) all saw strong growth in September. <\/p>\n
The September data was encouraging, but the overall trend remains uncertain. Moving forward, the fourth quarter should benefit from a relatively supportive base effect for imports. But unless domestic demand recovers by more than expected, growth looks likely to moderate from September’s levels.<\/p>\n
A flip side of the stronger import data, the trade surplus actually came in below expectations at $90.5bn. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More surprisingly, we also saw China’s import demand accelerate to 7.4% YoY, up from 1.3% in August. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-496370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115367392502545460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}