{"id":128196,"date":"2025-08-08T04:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128196\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T04:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:59:15","slug":"chinas-exports-surge-as-global-trump-tariffs-take-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128196\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Exports Surge as Global Trump Tariffs Take Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFour months after President Donald Trump declared the United States \u201cliberated\u201d from pervasive global trade<\/a> imbalances by a new tariff regime, a revamped set of duties on the country\u2019s most prominent trade partners has gone into effect.<\/p>\n

\n\tThursday saw dozens of nations integral to the fashion supply chain hit with steep, double-digit duties. The European Union\u2019s 27 member countries now face 15-percent tariffs<\/a> on U.S.-bound exports, while Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Pakistan were all hit with 19-percent tariffs and Bangladesh and Vietnam saw their duty rates set at 20 percent.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this week, the president threatened to elevate tariffs on India, already set at 25 percent, to 50 percent due to the country\u2019s continued purchase of Russian oil. He slapped Brazil with an analogous sky-high rate for pursuing criminal charges against its former president, a Trump ally.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut one key U.S. trading partner\u2014and the historic object of Trump\u2019s most fervent ire\u2014faces a separate deadline. The three-month bilateral tariff truce between the U.S. and China<\/a> expires Tuesday, and state officials on both sides have been fervently negotiating with the aim of brokering a deal before the 55-percent tariffs on Chinese shipments kick in.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether the pause is extended (as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday is likely) or another resolution is reached, importers have been clamoring to ensure that their China-originating goods are loaded onto vessels bound for U.S. shores before the pause is due to expire.<\/p>\n

\n\tChinese exports<\/a> grew 7.2 percent year over year to $321.8 billion in July in a sign of strength for the market as shippers rush product out of the country ahead of the looming negotiating deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe country\u2019s outbound shipments heavily outperformed the 5.4-percent jump calculated by a Reuters poll of economists, and represented an acceleration over export totals in May (4.8 percent) and June (5.8 percent).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ongoing trade war between the trans-Pacific powerhouses has resulted in a collapse in goods sent directly from China to the U.S., with exports falling 21.7 percent in July, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut July figures from the National Retail Federation\u2019s Global Port Tracker still indicate some semblance of a pull-forward, with major U.S. ports<\/a> expecting to pull in 2.1 percent more 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) than the year prior\u2014the most containers entering the country since May 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmerican companies that are still importing cargo from China via ocean or air are likely looking to get out in front of a potential increase in price\u2014again.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth the U.S. and China engaged in talks<\/a> in Stockholm to prevent tariffs from returning to the elevated levels they reached in April and May. The U.S. had hit Chinese goods with tariffs as high as 145 percent<\/a>, with China retaliating with an 85 percent duty before the countries agreed in May to mutually reduce their tariffs<\/a> for 90 days.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen including a 20 percent punitive duty for fentanyl trafficking, U.S. tariffs on Chinese exports currently stand at 55 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe deadline for the countries to negotiate a new trade deal is Aug. 12. If a deal is not made, the tariffs before the May truce would go back into effect, though administration officials have been hinting that an extension of the deal is imminent. <\/p>\n

\n\tThough the tenuous nature of the relationship has knocked down export numbers to the U.S., China has been able to more than make up for the gap elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe country\u2019s shipments to the 10 countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN<\/a>) increased 16.7 percent year over year. This includes markets like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.<\/p>\n

\n\tChina has increasingly relied on third countries such as those in ASEAN to circumvent tariff barriers and for the manufacturing of final products or components. The White House has explicitly targeted Vietnam and Thailand as countries that are participating in this transshipment process<\/a>, with the U.S. hitting the former with a 40 percent tariff for goods transshipped into the U.S. from China.<\/p>\n

\n\tOutbound shipments to the European Union increased by 9.2 percent in July, while exports to Latin America ticked up 7.7 percent. Africa had the largest increase in shipments on the receiving end at 42.4 percent.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaersk CEO Vincent Clerc<\/a> said in a second-quarter earnings call that the strength of Chinese exports to the rest of the non-U.S. world will dictate the wider growth of the container market.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOn the back of the industrial successes that they\u2019re having and the overcapacity that there is in China, this could actually carry stronger market growth than anticipated for a few years,\u201d said Clerc.<\/p>\n

\n\tChina\u2019s imports, meanwhile, rose by 4.1 percent year over year last month to $22.3 billion, representing the sharpest gain since July 2024. The numbers defied expectations of a 1 percent decline in the month, and build on a 1.1 percent gain in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe strong import month points to improved domestic demand as Beijing has placed a stronger focus on stimulating consumer spending.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the reality of the tariff landscape settled in on Thursday, experts weighed in about the potential impacts to shoppers and brands in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with CNBC, J.P. Morgan global market strategist Meera Pandit said, \u201cIn aggregate, we\u2019re expecting that around 60 percent of the overall cost of tariffs gets passed on to the consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrands and retailers will face about 40 percent of the tariff burden, she estimated, \u201cbut certainly it will be carrying the load on both sides, and have an economic impact when we think about the consumer and also profitability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this week, J.P. Morgan released reporting saying that \u201cinflation questions are heating up.\u201d Thus far, much of the cost of tariffs has been absorbed throughout the supply chain, with about 40 percent reaching consumers (much lower than the price hikes seen during Trump\u2019s first term when he levied Section 301 duties on China). However, that\u2019s expected to change.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPart of that has been thanks to inventories built up by front-loading, but that cushion can only go so far,\u201d analysts wrote. \u201cWe are starting to see goods inflation climbing again, with the potential to push overall inflation above 3 percent by year-end,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Ralph Lauren held its quarterly earnings call, with CEO Patrice Louvet saying that while consumer trends remained consistent with previous quarters, the company is taking a \u201cmore cautious\u201d view of the second half of the year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe big unknown sitting here today is the price sensitivity and how the consumer reacts to the broader pricing environment and how sensitive that consumer is,\u201d he added. The heritage New York brand this spring said it planned to hike up pricese in the fall as a means of offsetting the duty impacts.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company\u2019s stock price took a 7-percent hit on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four months after President Donald Trump declared the United States \u201cliberated\u201d from pervasive global trade imbalances by a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[26552,64,74,26757,79,13659,2175,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-128196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-asean","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-china-exports","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-global-trade","14":"tag-tariffs","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}