China’s trade surplus falls away

Monday 10 September 2018

China released August trade numbers over the weekend and it’d good news and bad news for the economic war. Imports rose 20% and exports 9.8.% with the surplus narrowing to $27.9bn:

The Chinese trade surplus is trending down though, alas, with the US it hit a new record high at $31.05bn.

We might expect this to continue as tariffs take effect. That Chinese production that is priced out of US markets will not necessarily repatriate to the US but go to other cheap labour economies. Thus the Chinese surplus may fall overall with helping that with the US.

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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.