China’s exports hit record high as Trump tariffs loom

Exports rose 10.7 percent in 2024, beating economists’ forecasts, customs data shows.

China’s exports hit a record high in 2024, state media has reported, a welcome boost for the world’s second-largest economy as United States President-elect Donald Trump’s promised tariffs threaten to dampen growth.

Exports rose 10.7 percent year-on-year, customs data showed on Monday, comfortably beating economists’ forecasts.

Imports, which were widely expected to decline, rose 1 percent, the strongest performance since July 2024, customs data showed.

The stronger-than-expected figures come as Trump is set to return to the White House on January 20 armed with a populist economic agenda that includes sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods.

Economists say Trump’s proposed tariffs would almost certainly raise prices for US consumers and cut into the profit margins of Chinese exporters.

A 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports would lower China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 2.5 percentage points over the following 12 months, analysts at Swiss bank UBS have estimated.

China’s exports look set to remain strong in the near term as firms frontload shipments to avoid higher tariffs, said Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, in a note.

“Outbound shipments are likely to stay resilient in the near-term, supported by further gains in the global market share thanks to a weak real effective exchange rate,” Huang wrote.

Beijing has in recent months announced some of its most aggressive measures to jumpstart the economy since the COVID-19 pandemic, including policy rate cuts and loosened restrictions on property purchases, amid concerns that its 5 percent GDP growth target is slipping out of reach.

The Chinese economy has been struggling with some of the slowest growth in decades amid a host of challenges including a prolonged real estate crisis, weak consumer sentiment and a declining population.

Beijing is on Friday set to release its GDP figures for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2024.

Last month, the World Bank raised China’s 2024 growth estimate to 4.9 percent, up from its forecast of 4.8 percent in June.