HONG KONG (AP) \u2014 China\u2019s exports rose 14.1% in April from a year earlier, the government said Saturday, despite the Iran war and lingering impacts from higher U.S. tariffs.<\/p>\n
The data were released just days ahead of a planned meeting<\/a> next week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.<\/p>\n That beat analysts\u2019 estimates and was a significant improvement from March\u2019s 2.5% year-on-year expansion. Exports to the U.S. rose 11.3% from the year before, up from a 26.5% drop in March.<\/p>\n Imports climbed 25.3%, slower than the 27.8% growth in March but still robust.<\/p>\n The Trump-Xi summit comes at a time when relations are beset by multiple issues, with efforts to end the war in Iran<\/a> eclipsing the usual sources of friction.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re expecting that overall external demand will remain a solid driver of growth this year,\u201d said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at Dutch bank ING, likely led by China\u2019s exports of semiconductors and autos.<\/p>\n In March, Chinese leaders set an annual economic growth target of 4.5% to 5%<\/a>, slightly lower than last year\u2019s<\/a> 5% expansion and the lowest target since 1991. Export growth is expected to continue to power its wider economy, especially as shipments increased from China to Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America<\/a> and Africa over the past months.<\/p>\n China\u2019s exports to the U.S. have fallen for most of the months since Trump imposed steeper tariffs and harsher controls on sharing of technology after he took office last year. But trade with the U.S. is likely improving this year, said Song, particularly because of the base effects of sharp declines caused by Trump\u2019s tariff hikes in 2025.<\/p>\n Apart from efforts to broker a peace agreement to end the Iran war, trade and export controls, including rare earths<\/a> and U.S. tech restrictions on China, will likely be on the agenda during the Trump-Xi summit, following a yearlong<\/a> U.S.-China trade truce reached late last year when the two leaders last met in South Korea.<\/p>\n Major breakthroughs on export controls are unlikely, but the leaders\u2019 upcoming meeting may bring \u201cincremental\u201d steps to troubleshoot trade friction, HSBC economists said in a recent research note.<\/p>\n \u201cOn balance, China looks to have more leverage,\u201d wrote Leah Fahy, senior China economist of Capital Economics, in a note. \u201cBut higher tariffs haven\u2019t stopped China\u2019s exports from continuing to surge over the past year, and Beijing has showed that it is prepared to wait out U.S. pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n For China, oil and fuel price hikes caused by the war in Iran are also feeding higher manufacturing and logistics costs across its many factories, said Wei Li, head of multi-asset investments at BNP Paribas Securities (China), while higher global inflation could dampen consumer purchasing power in China\u2019s overseas markets.<\/p>\n Still, China\u2019s overall economy has remained resilient compared with other countries, owing to its large oil reserves and more diversified energy sources.<\/p>\n ING\u2019s Song said China\u2019s trade surplus, which reached an all-time high of almost $1.2 trillion<\/a> last year, could narrow for the whole of this year. Imports so far have been stronger in 2026, though China is still recovering from a prolonged property slump<\/a> that has dragged on consumption and investment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONG KONG (AP) \u2014 China\u2019s exports rose 14.1% in April from a year earlier, the government said Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":784140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13214,59906,64,74,13212,69,12042,11289,57,86,67107,1801,13790,83,6087,320782,18245,16618,67,132,68,107,11762],"class_list":{"0":"post-784139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-bnp-paribas-sa","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-china-government","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-economic-policy","15":"tag-finance-business","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-government-policy","18":"tag-hsbc-holdings-plc","19":"tag-international","20":"tag-international-trade","21":"tag-iran","22":"tag-iran-war","23":"tag-leah-fahy","24":"tag-metals-and-mining","25":"tag-tariffs-and-global-trade","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-xi-jinping"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116544405776624297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784139","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=784139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}