China’s trade surplus hits new heights in 2025 despite US tariff war

Trade spread rises to astir $1.2 trillion arsenic tariffs spot exporters pivot to caller markets.

China’s commercialized surplus deed a caller precocious of astir $1.2 trillion successful 2025 contempt the tariff warfare with the United States.

Customs information released connected Wednesday showed that Chinese exports roseate by 5.5 percent past twelvemonth to full $3.77 trillion. The information shows that accrued commercialized with different countries crossed the globe made up for reduced commercialized with the US.

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Imports remained dependable astatine $2.58 trillion, creating a commercialized surplus of $1.19 trillion. The spread stood astatine $992bn successful 2024, earlier President Donald Trump launched his erratic commercialized argumentation actions.

Facing assertive tariffs successful the US market, Chinese firms pivoted to customers successful Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin ⁠America and Europe.

However, commercialized with ‌Russia dropped ‍for the archetypal clip ‍in 5 years, pulling backmost from a grounds level successful 2024 connected a descent successful Russian request for Chinese cars and a driblet successful the worth of Chinese imports of Russian ⁠crude oil.

China has provided a large economical lifeline to Russia arsenic it navigates US and European ​sanctions levied owed to its penetration of Ukraine successful February 2022.

“The momentum for planetary commercialized maturation looks to beryllium insufficient, and the outer situation for China’s overseas commercialized improvement remains terrible and complex,” Wang Jun, a vice curate astatine China’s customs administration, said astatine a quality briefing connected Wednesday.

But “with much diversified trading partners, (China’s) quality to withstand risks has been importantly enhanced,” Wang said, adding that the fundamentals ‍for China’s overseas commercialized remained “solid”.

Strong planetary request for machine chips and different devices, and the materials utilized to marque them, were among categories that supported China’s exports, analysts said.

In December, China’s exports climbed 6.6 percent from the twelvemonth earlier successful dollar terms, amended than economists’ estimates and higher than November’s 5.9 percent year-on-year increase. Imports successful December were up 5.7 percent year-on-year, compared with November’s 1.9 percent.

China’s commercialized surplus surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the archetypal clip successful November, arsenic the spread reached $1.08 trillion successful the archetypal 11 months of past year.

Lynn Song, main economist for Greater China astatine ING, said China’s grounds commercialized surplus puts it connected par with the gross home merchandise (GDP) of a apical 20 planetary economy.

“It is acceptable to assistance China execute its maturation people of astir 5 percent erstwhile the GDP information is published adjacent week,” said Song.

Economists expect exports volition proceed to enactment China’s system this year, contempt the ongoing commercialized friction and geopolitical tensions.

“We proceed to expect exports to enactment arsenic a large maturation operator successful 2026,” said Jacqueline Rong, main China economist astatine BNP Paribas.