Exports to the United States reported the eighth consecutive month of decline as shipments to other markets, such as the EU and Australia, soared.
China’s trade surplus has topped $1 trillion as of November, breaking the full-year record set in 2024, as an outpouring of cheap products floods the global markets amid sluggish demand at home.
Overall sales abroad surged by 5.9 percent in November in U.S. dollar terms compared to the same month last year, according to data released by the Chinese regime’s General Administration of Customs on Dec. 8. It bounced back from a 1.1 percent decline in the previous month—the first drop recorded this year—and beat economists’ projections in a Reuters poll of 3.8 percent growth.
Imports rose by 1.9 percent year over year to $218.7 billion. While the figure marked an improvement from October’s 1 percent gain, it still fell short of the median estimate of 3 percent growth in Reuters’s survey.
As a result, China recorded a trade surplus of $111.7 billion in November, compared with $90.1 billion in October.
In the first 11 months of this year, China’s trade surplus surpassed $1.1 trillion, up by 21.6 percent from the same period last year. In 2024, China’s trade surplus stood at a record $992.1 billion.
The robust growth in exports, along with the resulting trade deficit, has raised concerns among other economies, as foreign policymakers worry about job losses and factory closures in sectors flooded with low-priced Chinese products.
The EU’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, has warned that China’s rise “must not come at the expense of the European economy,” while U.S. President Donald Trump imposed additional tariffs on Chinese imports to narrow the massive trade deficit.
Surges in Exports to Non-US Markets
While Beijing and Washington have reached a tentative trade truce following a summit between the two countries’ leaders at the end of October, China’s exports to the United States continued the downward trend, plunging by 28.6 percent in November from a year earlier—the eighth consecutive month of decline.
“The tariff cuts agreed under the US-China trade truce didn’t help to lift shipments to the US last month, but overall export growth rebounded nonetheless,” Huang Zichun of Capital Economics wrote in a note on Dec. 8.
By Dorothy Li
