Exports rose 10.7 percent in 2024, beating economists’ forecasts, customs data showed.
Chinese exports hit a record high in 2024, state media reported, in a welcome boost to the world’s second-largest economy as tariffs promised by United States President-elect Donald Trump threaten to slow growth.
Exports rose 10.7 percent year-on-year, customs data showed on Monday, well beating economists’ forecasts.
Imports, widely expected to fall, rose 1 percent, the strongest performance since July 2024, customs data showed.
The higher-than-expected numbers 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 American consumers and cut into the profit margins of Chinese exporters.
A 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports would reduce China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 2.5 percentage points over the next 12 months, analysts at the Swiss bank UBS estimate.
China’s exports look set to remain strong in the short term as companies pre-stock shipments to avoid higher tariffs, Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
“Outbound shipments are likely to remain resilient in the near term, supported by further gains in global market share thanks to a weak real effective exchange rate,” Huang wrote.
Beijing has announced some of its most aggressive economic stimulus measures since the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months, including cutting interest rates and easing restrictions on property purchases, amid concerns that its 5 percent GDP growth target is slipping out of reach.
China’s economy is struggling with some of its slowest growth in decades amid a range of challenges including a lingering housing crisis, weak consumer sentiment and a declining population.
Beijing will release GDP data for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2024 on Friday.
Last month, the World Bank raised China’s growth estimate for 2024 to 4.9 percent, up from a forecast of 4.8 percent in June.
