China’s trade ends 2025 with record trillion-dollar surplus despite Trump tariffs
Beijing’s resistance to renewed tariff tensions since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last January has encouraged Chinese firms to shift their focus to Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset U.S. tariffs.
As Beijing turns to exports to offset a prolonged real estate slump and sluggish domestic demand, the record-breaking glut is further fueling economies’ concerns about China’s trade practices and overcapacity, as well as their over-reliance on basic Chinese products.
The full-year trade surplus of the manufacturing powerhouse reached $1.189 trillion; This is a figure equal to the GDP of the world’s 20 largest economies, such as Saudi Arabia. According to customs data on Wednesday, the trillion dollar ceiling was exceeded for the first time in November.
Outbound shipments increased 6.6% in value terms in December, compared to a 5.9% increase in November. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 3.0 percent increase.
Imports increased by 5.7 percent, following a 1.9 percent increase a month ago, exceeding the forecast for a 0.9 percent increase.
Monthly export surpluses exceeded $100 billion seven times last year; partly supported by the weakening of the yuan; this figure was only once in 2024; This underscores that Trump’s actions have barely harmed China’s trade with the wider world, even as he has restricted shipments to the US. Economists expect China to continue gaining global market share this year, helped by Chinese firms setting up overseas manufacturing hubs that give them access to the United States at lower tariffs, as well as in the European Union, due to strong demand for lower-end chips and other electronic products.
China’s automotive industry, the flagship of Beijing’s global industrial ambitions, saw total exports rise 19.4% to 5.79 million vehicles last year, with pure EV shipments rising 48.8%. China will likely remain the world’s largest automobile exporter for the third year after overtaking Japan in 2023.
But Beijing has signaled that it recognizes that it needs to moderate its industrial exports if it is to maintain its success, and the leadership is increasingly conscious and vocal about the imbalances in the Chinese economy and the “big image problem” posed by exports.
Following November’s trillion-dollar surplus data, Chinese Premier Li Qiang was quoted on national television last week as calling for “proactively expanding imports and promoting the balanced development of imports and exports.”
The country has also scrapped subsidy-like export tax rebates for its solar industry, a long-standing point of friction with EU countries.
Last month, lawmakers passed revisions to the Foreign Trade Act after two readings instead of the usual three, in a signal to members of a major trans-Pacific trade agreement that China is ready to move away from industrial subsidies to freer, more open trade.
Despite a year-long truce on tariffs that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed in late October, the 47.5% U.S. tariff on Chinese goods remains well above the roughly 35% level that analysts say allows Chinese firms to export to the U.S. at a profit.
