Official figures released by the General Administration of Customs on Monday showed that exports rose by 4.8 percent year on year to US$316.1 billion last month.
That growth rate fell short of estimates of a 5 percent jump in a Reuters’ poll and was
notably lower than the 8.1 percent annual rise seen in April despite US President Donald Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods taking effect that month.
Imports, meanwhile, decreased by 3.4 percent to US$212.9 billion, compared with a 0.2 percent decline in April, and was also much steeper than the 0.9 percent fall that economists had estimated.
Those figures left the country with a trade surplus of US$103.2 billion for the month, up from US$96.18 billion in April.
The latest fall in exports were visibly dragged down by shipments to the United States, which plunged 34.4 percent last month.
That was much sharper than the 21 percent annual decline registered in April and marked the sharpest monthly drop in more than five years – since February 2020.
And the export decline came despite Beijing’s reaching a tariff agreement with Washington on May 12, which saw the two sides roll back most of the sweeping tariffs imposed on each other’s goods for 90 days.
Shipments to the Southeast Asian bloc, Asean, however, continued to rise, jumping nearly 15 percent, while those to European Union nations and Africa rose 12 percent and over 33 percent, respectively.
The latest agreement by China and the United States, two of the world’s economic superpowers, has set the additional US levies on Chinese goods to 30 percent and countervailing Chinese duties on US imports to 10 percent, on top of some retaliatory tariffs imposed earlier on certain American goods.
But despite the tariff truce, the two superpowers are still locked in disputes over key trade issues, such as Chinese export controls on rare earth minerals and US curbs on chip-related exports to China.
Leaders of the two nations have agreed to further talks, with a new round of high-level bilateral trade meeting set to take place in London later today, led by Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with two other US officials.
For the first five months of the year, China’s exports grew by 6 percent year on year while imports declined 4.9 percent. Exports to the United States retreated 9.7 percent while those to Asean members grew by 12.2 percent.
