China's General Administration of Customs announced on Monday that total exports in 2024 will be $3.58 trillion and imports will be $2.59 trillion, resulting in a trade surplus of $990 billion, surpassing the previous record of $838 billion in 2022. It was announced that it would be easily surpassed.
In December 2024, it recorded a one-month trade surplus of $104.8 billion. new york times (new york times) cause Exports could “surge” before President-elect Donald Trump “takes office and starts raising tariffs.”
of new york times He suggested that China's flood of exports has not built friendly relations with many trading partners, and that the United States is not the only country that has erected tariff barriers to slow the influx of cheap Chinese goods. .
“China's exports of everything from cars to solar panels have been an economic boon for the country. Exports are limited to factory workers, whose inflation-adjusted wages have nearly doubled over the past decade. But it also created millions of jobs for well-paid engineers, designers, and researchers,” the report said.
China's trade situation has improved in industries such as solar panels, which the communist state has completely dominated around the world, as well as commercial jet aircraft, which China can now produce domestically instead of importing on a large scale. There are some interesting combinations of products. China has not yet achieved self-sufficiency, but energy sources other than solar power are particularly noteworthy.
Automobiles are an interesting case study in China's manufacturing revolution, which has shifted most of China's cars from imports to imports. Become world's largest exporter In about 20 years, the automobile
critic charging China is distorting global car sales with “overcapacity”. In other words, China is producing cheaper cars than it needs because the economic downturn has reduced domestic consumer demand. Overcapacity and massive government subsidies will make it easier for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers to overwhelm the domestic auto industry in every accessible market, including the United States.
Record exports from 2024 may not be good news for China. That's because eventually, especially if other countries continue to erect tariff barriers, Chinese companies will begin to go bankrupt from lowering prices and expanding inventories.
China's auto industry appears to have at least reached its peak. Automotive industries in other major markets are politically powerful, and these industries spend huge sums of money and huge government subsidies to create their own EV markets, making cars subject to tariffs. are. The barrier is most likely to hold firm.
China Automobile Manufacturers Association (CAAM) released Data on Monday showed that China's auto export growth is expected to slow from 19.3% in 2024 to just 5.8% in 2025, while Beijing's government plans to boost domestic auto demand with new subsidies and incentives. I'm trying hard to revitalize it.
In fact, 2024 was actually a tough year for Chinese automakers, as EV sales rose 80.9% in 2023, but fell to 19.3% growth last year, according to CAAM data. Chinese companies have been promoting hybrid vehicles rather than pure EVs to avoid European tariffs, and even as EV exports have plummeted, hybrid vehicle exports have soared.
Trade analysts say China's exports in other industries may remain strong in the first quarter of 2025, but could decline significantly thereafter as additional tariffs are raised in countries such as the United States. He said that there is.
“China's deflationary pressures in manufacturing could continue to further fuel geopolitical tensions,” said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis. said Sunday on CNBC.
One major exception to this tension is that China exports materials and equipment used by manufacturers in other countries. China's steel exports soared last year to a nine-year high, but the manufacturing sector is less likely than the retail market to complain about cheap Chinese goods produced in large quantities due to overcapacity. It will be done.
Ng predicted that China's domestic demand would remain low in 2025 due to “weak consumer sentiment, uneven recovery in real estate, and sluggish growth in local government infrastructure projects.”
