China’s exports face a “hard and tortuous” path to recovery as uncertainties dog the global economy’s gradual return to health, with this year’s trade surplus set to shrink from last year’s record, the Commerce Ministry said.
Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming (陳德銘) told a conference yesterday that China’s trade surplus was expected to fall to US$180 billion to US$190 billion this year from last year’s record US$295.5 billion.
The surplus was US$136.4 billion in the first nine months of the year.
In a statement released late on Friday on the ministry’s Web site, it said the full-year fall in exports compared with the previous year should be less than 20 percent.
“In 2010, the world economy will hopefully see a gradual recovery, and the environment for Chinese trade will gradually improve,” it said.
“But as there is not yet sufficient strength in the global economic recovery, many problems and contradictions have yet to be basically resolved. The recovery will be hard and tortuous, and it will be hard to see an obvious recovery in international demand in the short term,” the ministry said.
Net exports shaved 3.6 percentage points off headline GDP growth of 8.9 percent in the third quarter as Chinese manufacturers continued to reel from a slump in global trade.
Protectionism in these difficult times was a particular worry, as was increasing competition, the ministry said.
“At present some nations are conducting probes into Chinese goods, which is causing yet further obstruction for a recovery in Chinese exports,” it said.
A US trade panel on Friday approved the eighth government investigation this year into charges of unfair Chinese pricing practices in a case in which US companies want a nearly 100 percent duty or more on US$382 million of imported steel pipes.
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) voted 6-0 that there was a reasonable indication that imports of the allegedly subsidized and unfairly priced pipes could harm US producers.
The ITC vote came one day after China and the US committed in annual high-level talks to “avoid abusing trade protection measures.”
A US spokeswoman said that did not mean Washington promised not to accept new petitions asking for duties or other other restrictions on imports from China.
The latest case involves seamless carbon and alloy steel standard, line and pressure pipe used in industrial piping systems to convey water, steam, oil products, natural gas and other liquids and gases.
A US Commerce Department investigation of the Chinese pipe imports will determine the size of the duties to be imposed. The petitioners have requested a 98.37 percent anti-dumping duty to offset what they allege to be unfairly low prices for Chinese-made steel pipe sold in the US.
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