China’s trade surplus with the US rose to a new high of US$35.5 billion last month as businesses raced to prepare for a threatened increase in tariffs over the new year.
China’s exports to the US rose by 9.7 per cent year on year to US$46.2 billion in November, while imports dropped 25 per cent to US$10.6 billion, according to data published by the General Administration of Customs in China on Saturday.
But China’s overall trade last month was worse than expected, with export growth slowing to 5.4 per cent and import growth slowing to 3 per cent.
This marked a big fallback from the double-digit expansions recorded in recent months as China’s economy continued to slow down with many small private exporters cutting back their operations and laying off staff.
However, due to the Chinese currency’s depreciation against the dollar, in yuan terms exports rose by 10.2 per cent and imports by 7.8 per cent.
Exports to the US are likely to have been bolstered by American businesses front-loading their stock by buying more goods from China before the threatened increase in tariffs kicked in.
However, the pace of export growth to the US slowed from 13 per cent in October, which suggested that the impact of front-loading was fading as many American buyers had stockpiled goods well in advance.
The US had been threatening to raise tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent on January 1 – but this has since been deferred following last weekend’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Argentina.
(South China Morning Post)
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