China's Exports to US Sink, Offset by Trade with Other Economies, as US Tariffs Hit Global Trade
Chinatopix Via AP
A container ship sails off a port in Qingdao in east China's Shandong province on Wednesday, May 7, 2025.
China's exports to the United States tumbled in April while its trade with other economies surged, suggesting that President Donald Trump's tariffs offensive is hastening a shakeup in global supply chains.
Total exports from China rose 8.1% last month from a year earlier, much faster than the 2% pace most economists had been expecting. That was much slower than the 12.4% year-on-year increase in March. Imports fell 0.2% in April from the year before.
Shipments to the U.S. sank 21% in dollar terms as Trump's tariffs on most Chinese exports rose to as high as 145%. With Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods at 125%, business between the two biggest economies has grown increasingly uncertain.
China's imports from the U.S. dropped more than 13% from a year earlier, while its politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States was nearly $20.5 billion in April, down from about $27.2 billion a year earlier.
In the first four months of the year, China's exports to the United States fell 2.5% from a year earlier, while imports from the U.S. fell 4.7%.
A potential break in the tariffs stalemate could come as soon as this weekend. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior trade officials are due to meet with Chinese officials in Geneva on Saturday. But Beijing and Washington are at odds over a raft of issues, including colliding strategic interests that will may impede progress in the talks.
Some of the punitive tariffs, including Beijing's retaliatory 125% tariffs on U.S. exports, could be rolled back, but a full reversal is unlikely, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report.
'This means China's exports to the U.S. are set for further declines over the coming months, not all of which will be offset by increased trade with other countries. We still expect export growth to turn negative later this year,' Huang said.
Whatever the outcome of those discussions, the rapid increase in Chinese exports to other countries reflects a restructuring that began years ago but has gained momentum as Trump has raised barriers to exporting to the U.S.
Global manufacturers have been looking for alternatives to a near total reliance on manufacturing in China after disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for more diverse options.
The need for more versatile supply chains grew more apparent as Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese exports during his first term in office. Most of those remained during former President Joe Biden's term.
Exports to the United States accounted for about a tenth of China's total exports in April and the U.S. is still China's largest single-country market. But the European Union and Southeast Asia are larger regional export markets.
Trade with a broader grouping, the 15-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which does not include the United States, is still bigger. And exports to countries participating in China's 'Belt and Road Initiative,' a vast network of Beijing-supported infrastructure projects, are bigger still.
In the first four months of the year, exports to the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations rose 11.5% from a year earlier, and those to Latin America also climbed 11.5%. Shipments to India jumped nearly 16% by value, and exports to Africa surged 15%.
Some of the fastest growth was in Asia, reflecting moves by Chinese and other manufacturers to diversify their supply chains outside of the Chinese mainland. Most notable were exports to Vietnam, which jumped 18% year-on-year. Exports to Thailand were up 20%.
Back in China, preliminary data have shown a sharp decline in shipping and other trade activity. Earlier this week, Beijing announced a barrage of measures meant to counter the impact of the trade war on its economy, which was already struggling to regain momentum after the pandemic and a lengthy downturn in its housing sector.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yomiuri Shimbun
23 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
700 Marines Deployed to L.A. as Immigration Protests Continue
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post Protesters are seen outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Monday in Los Angeles. The Pentagon on Monday ordered a battalion of 700 Marines to Los Angeles as protests of the Trump administration's immigration policies spilled into a fourth day, escalating a confrontation between the White House and the country's most populous state. The Marines, summoned from an infantry unit typically trained for overseas warfare, will assist more than 300 National Guard members that President Donald Trump deployed to the city over the weekend, the first wave of roughly 2,100 activated so far for the mission, according to the Defense Department. The deployments follow demonstrations against immigration raids that at times turned violent. The Marines, stationed east of Los Angeles in Twentynine Palms, had started moving out Monday afternoon, a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations. This marks the first time in six decades an American president has ordered such a military intervention without the approval of a state's governor. State and local officials in California – a frequent target of Trump's ire – denounced the move as incendiary. 'This is unprecedented that the president is using the military against his own people in this way,' said Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose district adjacent to downtown encompasses a range of immigrant communities. Most protests have been peaceful, state and local officials have said, even as they spread to cities across the country. 'U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes,' California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on social media. 'They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.' The Marines will deploy from a military base in Twentynine Palms, a three-hour drive east of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. They will focus on 'protecting federal personnel and federal property,' the Pentagon said in a statement, and they will partner with National Guard members who have been trained in crowd control and de-escalation. The mobilization is a significant move by the Pentagon. Typically, National Guard members, rather than active-duty troops such as the Marines, are mobilized for civil unrest missions at the behest of governors or the president. The Marines and Guard members under federal orders will serve in a support role and cannot participate in direct immigration or law enforcement operations. That would change if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, which gives the president broader powers to conduct policing operations with troops under federal control. Troops being sent to Los Angeles are 'trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force,' Northern Command, which oversees operations in North America, said in a statement. The activated units so far are drawn from combat units, not military police personnel, who specialize in civil disturbance response. The move was met with skepticism among some of the protesters in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. Amaris Leon, a 35-year-old lawyer from Sacramento, said he interpreted the deployment of Marines as an effort to set 'the military on civilians for exercising their First Amendment rights.' Trump is trying to rile people up, said Teri Merrick, a retired professor, 'so he can have an excuse to come in and stomp everybody down.' The protests began after a week of immigration raids in Southern California, which resulted in more than 100 arrests at workplaces that neighbors described as normally calm, including a doughnut shop and Home Depot stores. Demonstrators took to the streets in response, lighting the fuse that sparked days of widely broadcasted dust-ups. Portions of the 101 Freeway closed over the weekend when protesters clogged its southbound lanes, snarling already notorious traffic. Protesters hurled rocks at police cruisers, tear gas filled the air and phones captured videos of rioters torching self-driving vehicles, leading one robotaxi company to suspend part of its Los Angeles services. More than 50 protesters have been arrested, according to local law enforcement. The National Guard members had already improved the situation in Los Angeles, Trump said Monday. 'Thank goodness we sent out some wonderful National Guard – they really helped,' he said. 'A lot of problems that we're having out there, they were afraid to do anything. And we sent out the troops, and they've done a fantastic job.' But local officials said the deployment was unnecessary. The chaos from the protests was contained to 'a few streets downtown' that looked 'horrible,' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said on CNN. But there has not been, she added, 'citywide civil unrest.' California sued the Trump administration Monday over the deployment of California National Guard members to Los Angeles without Newsom's consent. The fallout from the protests appears to have deepened the political feud between Trump and Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic hopeful. The Trump administration has been weighing the cancellation of California's federal funding, an unprecedented move that would decimate the state's budget. And Trump endorsed arresting Newsom on Monday after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House. 'I would do it if I were Tom,' Trump told reporters as he returned to the White House, referring to border czar Tom Homan. 'I think it's great. Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing.' Newsom responded minutes later in a social media post on X, calling it 'an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.' 'The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation – this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism,' he wrote. After a chaotic weekend, downtown Los Angeles residents woke to a jarring combination of calm streets and graffiti-marred buildings. Just outside the city's core, in the coffee-shop-studded neighborhood of Silver Lake, people casually walked dogs and sipped cortados as the workweek started. Yet the national spotlight remained glued to Hollywood's backyard, which was caught in the crosshairs of dueling political narratives: While right-leaning media looped videos of burning cars and street skirmishes, Democrats insisted that most protesters remained peaceful. Protests spread across the country after the Friday arrest of David Huerta, the 58-year-old head of the Service Employees International Union's California branch. Huerta was arrested after sitting in the path of federal agents targeting Los Angeles warehouse workers, and he now faces a felony conspiracy charge. The Service Employees International Union, which represents thousands of janitors, cooks, security guards and other service workers, organized rallies in more than a dozen states, with members and their supporters condemning immigration-enforcement tactics they cast as inhumane. Huerta was released from custody Monday on a $50,000 bond. Bill Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, wrote in a post on X that Huerta had 'deliberately obstructed' federal agents who were executing a warrant. 'No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties,' Essayli wrote. Some Los Angeles residents are bracing for more protests. Christian Frizzell, owner of the downtown Redwood Bar, was trying to decide whether to close early Monday. They usually stay open until 2 a.m. But he noticed a nearby credit union had boarded up its windows in anticipation of more protests. Back in 2020, his bar was damaged during Black Lives Matter protests. Still, he wasn't sure if Marines were the best choice to protect his property. 'It seems like a large escalation,' he said of the coming deployment. 'I wish they would try to cool it down.'
Japan Today
an hour ago
- Japan Today
Top U.S. universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
By COLLIN BINKLEY Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. 'Columbia's exposure to this 'stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high,' the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter. People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%. Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body. America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a 'gold rush' in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities. 'Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university," said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid, and at some schools they pay two or three times the tuition rate charged to U.S. students. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said. But the expansion wasn't equal across all types of colleges — public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their numbers of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by the rising costs and student debt loads. Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. 'That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'' he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard 'yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.' In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of 'a painstaking, decades-long project' to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. 'In our interconnected global economy," the school said, 'a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
US deploys Marines to Los Angeles as Trump backs arrest of California governor
LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. military will temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in President Donald Trump's response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies. The U.S. Northern Command said a battalion would be sent to help protect federal property and personnel until more National Guard troops could reach the scene. For now, the Trump administration was not invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity.
