China’s trade surplus with the US ballooned to a record US$35.6 billion last month, official data showed yesterday, as exports across the Pacific remained strong, despite a raft of US tariffs, while imports shrank.
Relations between the world’s top two economies continue to be tense, despite a trade dispute truce struck between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last week.
Trump and some people in his administration have said that China would immediately start buying US goods in bulk, but Beijing has not confirmed those claims.
The increasingly lopsided trade in goods between the two nations threatens to further derail prospects for a trade deal during a 90-day negotiation period.
The ballooning trade deficit with China is a particularly sore point for Trump, who campaigned on turning the situation around.
China’s exports to the US for last month rose 9.8 percent year-on-year, while imports for the month fell 25 percent year-on-year, data from China’s customs administration showed.
Usually Chinese buyers have snapped up US soybeans in the final months of the year as the harvest hits the market and beans from competitor Brazil dry up.
However, this year, Chinese buyers have passed on US soybeans, which face a 25 percent border tax upon import, part of the US$50 billion in US goods that Beijing hit with higher duties this summer in retaliation for US tariffs.
China’s soybean imports fell 38 percent year-on-year to 5.4 million tonnes for the month, the data showed.
The trade surplus with the US expanded to US$293.5 billion for the January-to-November period, up from US$251.3 billion in the same period last year.
China’s overall trade — what it buys and sells with all countries, including the US — logged a US$44.7 billion surplus last month, up from US$35 billion in October, the data showed.
However, growth of exports and imports slowed from October, with exports rising 5.4 percent year-on-year for last month, short of the 9.4 percent forecast by Bloomberg News, and imports rising 3 percent year-on-year, also below the forecast.
The sagging export and import growth is another bad sign for China’s economy, which grew at its slowest pace for nine years in the third quarter, expanding 6.5 percent year-on-year for the July-to-September period.
While exports to the US have held up so far this autumn, the trade dispute has sapped confidence.
The Shanghai Composite Index has fallen by about one-quarter from its January high, while the yuan has slipped about 9 percent against the US dollar.
In the US, major stock indices fell more than 2 percent to close the market’s worst week since March and one that left the Dow and the S&P 500 in negative territory for the year.
Still, Beijing remains outwardly optimistic on prospects for a trade deal.
“We are fully confident that we can reach an agreement in the coming 90 days,” Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng (高峰) said on Thursday.
Trump tweeted out the quote, adding: “I agree!”
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