China-US trade up by 11.8% in first seven months of 2022, continuing stable trend

China-US trade rose by 11.8 percent in yuan terms in the first seven months this year, data released by the Chinese customs showed on Sunday, demonstrating a stable trend between the two countries despite geo-political fluctuations.

According to data provided by Chinese customs on Sunday, China-US trade rose by 11.8 percent year-on-year to 2.93 trillion yuan ($433 billion) from January to July. The US remains China’s third largest trading partner after the EU and ASEAN economies.

The figures pointed toward a very stable trend over recent weeks, as the data is almost on par with China-US trade in the first six months this year, which amounted to a 11.7 percent growth in yuan terms, data released by the customs showed.

In general, China’s foreign trade rose by 10.4 percent year-on-year in the first seven months this year.

He Weiwen, an executive council member of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, said that China-US trade is largely backed by US markets’ stable demands for Chinese goods, which boosted export data from China to the country.

In the first seven months this year, China’s exports to the US rose 15.1 percent to 2.25 trillion yuan, while imports rose 2.3 percent on a yearly basis. China’s trade surplus with the US widened by 21.7 percent to 1.57 trillion yuan, customs data showed.

“This showed that despite of tight political or strategic relations between the two countries, the situation of integrated supply chains between China, US markets is still unchanged, as trade is not decided by the White House, but by the markets and businesspeople,” he said.

According to He, political power can’t utterly shake China-US economic interaction. And particularly against the backdrop of global economic slowdown, the importance of Chinese products to the US economy is obvious to all.

Hu Qimu, chief research fellow at the Sinosteel Economic Research Institute, said that the recovery of US economy following ease of pandemic control measures has boosted the US’ demands for foreign products, a large part of which are made in China.

China-US relations showed signs of rapid deterioration following US House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan island, with the mainland government launching a number of countermeasures against the US, including cancelling China-US cooperation in several regions.

However, He said that since the countermeasures don’t target the trade sector, it’s unlikely to result in large changes in China-US trading patterns in the second half of the this year despite a potential slowdown in China-US trade growth to some extent.

Hu nevertheless stressed now that US’s employment situation is improving well, the Biden administration might turn to a hardliner stance toward China as the country is less dependent upon external demands to drive up economy. This casts some shadow on China-US trade in the third and fourth quarter, but a significant drop is unlikely, he told the Global Times.

Source: Global Times