Name: How China shrugged off Trump’s tariffs to deliver a record trade surplus | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T16:52:06.000Z
Duration: 4 min 28 s
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China has announced a record trillion dollar trade surplus last year as its exports flood world markets.

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And despite Donald Trump's tariffs, China's trade surplus, the value of goods and services it sold abroad compared to that of its imports, reached a staggering $1.19 trillion.

To counter the impact of the US President's tariffs, China exported elsewhere, including Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Well, to break this down for us, we're joined now by Clifford Koonin from DW Business.

Clifford, what does this enormous export surplus tell us about China's economy?

Well, I think it tells us, it tells us a lot about the Chinese economy, that it's a lot more resilient, I think, than people might have imagined.

Part of this whole drive within China is to make itself completely, you know, that people cannot do without China overseas.

And at the same time, it wants to reduce its reliance on what's coming into the economy.

So what we see is this very, you know, imports are falling, exports are absolutely booming.

They're selling all these goods to neighboring countries, they're in some cases dumping goods.

And there's also imbalance within the Chinese economy itself.

And this trade surplus is bigger than the Polish economy.

And also it shows how the whole notion of global trade as we know it has completely been turned on its head over the last couple of years since Donald Trump's trade wars.

China appears to have shrugged off the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs.

Well, it's interesting now that the US Share of Chinese exports is at its lowest level since 1995.

That's more than 30 years, which is an incredible figure given that US China relations and US China trade was so central to global trade.

How they did it was by exporting to their neighbors and by, particularly in Southeast Asia, to developing countries in Africa and also to the EU by selling a lot of goods, consumer electronics, e vehicles, into Europe.

Now, while this works short term, it also shows that there are imbalances in the Chinese economy because it's still struggling, because it's got all these issues with unemployment and the property market being very sluggish.

So they managed to do it by basically just pushing all these goods out of the country.

And it's led to these incredible figures.

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Matz and Keir Starmer of the uk they're both heading to China for talks with the government there also presumably about trade later this month.

Are they expected to raise the issue of China's enormous trade surplus with Chinese leaders?

I think when you talk to people about these visits, what they're saying is that they will definitely raise it, but

there's a question of how much that melts can do or Starmer can do in the face of these, in the face of such these massive trade imbalances.

At this stage, Germany is particularly exposed because a lot of its industry, its car industry, its chemicals industry, has massive Chinese dependency.

And if you look at what the US has done, it's really decoupled almost to a certain extent.

I mean, this is a huge decoupling given that we're going back to 1995, since we're seeing these figures, as we mentioned.

But Germany and other European countries have become very, very dependent on China.

So while they will definitely address this in their, there's a limit to how much they can actually do because ultimately they are now they've become so dependent on China very quickly.

What sort of challenges is China likely to face now with its economy this year?

Well, I think these imbalances that we mentioned are going to be a problem.

How is it going to kick start domestic demand, get consumers to start buying things in China?

I think that's going to be the biggest challenge that it faces this year.

Clifford, thank you very much, Clifford Koonin from DW Business.

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How China shrugged off Trump’s tariffs to deliver a record trade surplus | DW News

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