China rebalancing, my butt

China’s trade balance for June is out and the weakening trend continues. Year on year imports were up 6.3% and exports were up 11.3%. Exports beat expectations and imports missed by a wide margin. The declining trend for growth in both is very clear in the chart:

The trade balance was a fat surplus of $31.7 billion, miles ahead of consensus at $24 billion.

In short, China is quite happily riding out global weakness by leaning on external demand, while its domestic demand flags. Now where have I seen that before?

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.