China's industrial output, retail sales dip amid US trade tensions
China's industrial output and retail sales growth have slowed amid trade tensions with the United States.
Factory output grew 6.1 percent year-on-year in April, down from a 7.7 percent rise in March, data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.
While down compared with the previous month, the figure beat analysts' expectations.
Analysts polled by the Reuters and Bloomberg news agencies had respectively forecast growth of 5.5 percent and 5.7 percent.
Retail sales grew 5.1 percent year-on-year, slower than the 5.9 percent growth recorded in March and below analysts' forecasts.
Fixed-asset investment, which includes property and infrastructure investment, rose 4 percent.
Unemployment fell slightly, from 5.2 percent to 5.1 percent.
The latest data is likely to bolster hopes of China's economy remaining resilient in the face of US President Donald Trump's tariffs, after gross domestic product expanded a better-than-expected 5.4 percent in the January-March period.
The National Bureau of Statistics said the economy maintained 'new and positive development momentum' due to Beijing's economic policies, despite the 'increasing impact of external shocks'.
'However, we should be aware that there are still many unstable and uncertain factors in external environment, and the foundation for sustained economic recovery needs to be further consolidated,' the statistics agency said in a statement.
The economic figures are the first to be released since Washington and Beijing last week agreed to dramatically reduce tariffs on each other's goods for 90 days.
Under the deal reached in Geneva, the US lowered its tariff on Chinese goods from 145 percent to 30 percent, while China slashed its rate from 125 percent to 10 percent.
'The risk is that tariffs remain in place for a long time, and eventually, we see production offshored,' Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said in a note on Monday.
'But amid tariff unpredictability, not just for China but across the world, few companies will be rushing to commit resources to set up offshore manufacturing facilities. This could mean that a decent portion of China's manufacturing and exports will be less impacted than originally feared.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump announces second round of US trade talks with China next week
United States President Donald Trump has announced a new round of trade talks with China in an apparent bid to dial down a bitter battle over tariffs between the world's two biggest economies. The president said on social media that the meeting would take place in London on Monday, his announcement coming one day after a rare leader-to-leader phone call with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping appeared to calm rising tensions. 'The meeting should go very well,' said Trump in a post on his Truth Social platform, adding that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would meet the Chinese team. The talks will mark the second round of negotiations between the two countries since Trump launched his trade war this year, targeting China with levies of up to 145 percent. Beijing struck back with countermeasures of 125 percent. Following talks in Geneva last month, both sides agreed to temporarily bring down the triple-digit tariffs, with US tariffs cooling to 30 percent and China's to 10 percent. But the temporary halt is expected to expire in early August and Trump last week accused China of violating the pact, underscoring deeper differences on both sides. US officials have accused China of slow-walking export approvals of rare earth minerals, which the country had limited after the tariff war broke out, triggering alarm among US companies. Other US concerns include alleged fentanyl trafficking, the status of democratically governed Taiwan, and China's state-dominated, export-driven economic model. On Wednesday, Trump said on Truth Social that Xi was 'VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH'. However, he reported a 'positive conclusion', following his long-awaited phone call with Xi on Thursday, which likely paved the way for further high-level trade talks – though a swift resolution to the tariffs impasse remains uncertain. The Chinese foreign ministry said Xi asked Trump to 'remove the negative measures' that the US has taken against China, alluding to his administration's decision to revoke the visas of Chinese students studying in the US.
Al Jazeera
15 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
What has Musk accused Trump of in relation to the Epstein files?
The tech billionaire and owner of Tesla and Starlink, Elon Musk, has accused United States President Donald Trump of being one of the names in the still-sealed Epstein files, and claims that this is the real reason key documents are still being withheld from the public. In January 2024, many of the so-called 'Epstein files' compiled by US federal investigators were released to the public. However, some remained sealed. Trump's presidency began with a strong boost from Musk, who donated large sums to Trump's presidential campaign and was appointed to lead a newly formed federal agency aimed at streamlining government operations, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But that relationship fractured after Musk resigned from the role in May 2025, following mounting public backlash over fiscal policies and a sharp decline in Tesla's stock. Since then, Musk has become increasingly vocal in his criticism of Trump, calling his 'One Big Beautiful Bill' a 'disgusting abomination' for increasing the national debt and eliminating electric vehicle subsidies, and, now, accusing him of links to Epstein. Here's what we know about the Epstein files and Musk's accusations. The 'Epstein files' are a collection of documents compiled by US federal authorities during investigations into the activities of Jeffrey Epstein, the now-deceased financier and convicted sex offender. These files include flight logs, contact lists, court records and other materials documenting his activities and associations with high-profile individuals. The first major release of the documents took place in January 2024, when a federal judge ordered the unsealing of records from a 2015 defamation lawsuit against Epstein's associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. In February 2025, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) followed up with an official declassification of additional documents, many of which had already leaked, featuring redacted flight logs and contact books. However, many documents remain sealed or heavily redacted, prompting public calls for full disclosure. US Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated that the FBI is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, with further releases pending necessary redactions to protect victims and ongoing investigations. On Thursday, Musk publicly accused President Donald Trump of being named in the unreleased Epstein files. In a post on his social media platform X, Musk wrote: '@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.' He did not provide any evidence to support this has not directly addressed Musk's claim regarding the Epstein files. However, during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he was 'very disappointed' by Musk's criticism of the fiscal bill and suggested that Musk's opposition was down to the elimination of electric vehicle subsidies. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. Trump also threatened to terminate federal contracts and subsidies for Musk's companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, stating that this would save the US government billions of dollars. Trump and Epstein were acquaintances in the 1980s and 1990s, often seen at social occasions together in New York and Palm Beach, Florida. Their appearances together were documented in news coverage and social pages at the time, while US media reported the two became close during the 1990s when Epstein bought a mansion near Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach. A 1992 video published by NBC News shows Trump and Epstein socialising and watching dancers at a party hosted at Mar-a-Lago. In a 2002 profile of Epstein by New York Magazine, Trump was quoted describing Epstein as a 'terrific guy' who enjoyed the company of beautiful women 'on the younger side'. 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,' Trump said. Flight logs released during court proceedings against Maxwell show that Trump flew on Epstein's private jet at least seven times between 1993 and 1997, occasionally with family members. Epstein's 'Black Book' – a contact directory obtained in 2015 by Gawker, a now-defunct US blog that covered celebrities and media – was later submitted as court evidence and listed multiple phone numbers and addresses for Trump, including his office, home and Mar-a-Lago. Once allies, Musk's relationship with Trump has deteriorated significantly since his criticism of Trump's fiscal policy and subsequent allegations about the Epstein files. Trump's threats to cut federal contracts with Musk's companies led to a 14 percent drop in Tesla's stock value. Musk has since called for Trump's impeachment and replacement with US Vice President JD Vance. This public spat has also drawn attention from political figures, with some Democrats demanding the release of the full Epstein files and questioning whether they are being withheld due to potential implications for Trump.
Al Jazeera
16 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Has DOGE really saved the US government $180bn?
President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk celebrated their efforts to slash federal spending before Musk stepped away from his White House work. Musk wore a black DOGE hat over a bruised right eye that he blamed on his young son's punch. That was May 30 in the Oval Office. Days later, the two billionaires were punching at each other on the social media platforms they own. Their fight began over federal tax and spending legislation, with Musk calling a Trump-backed bill 'a disgusting abomination' and Trump saying he was 'very disappointed' with Musk. Soon, Musk claimed credit for Trump and Republicans winning in 2024, and Trump threatened to cut off Musk's companies' federal contracts. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2025The public display of animosity called into question the fate of months of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) work. Under Musk's oversight and with Trump's approval, DOGE axed billions of dollars in grants for state health departments and scientific research. It gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers. It all but shuttered the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the decades-old department that provides food and healthcare to people in other countries. Still, as Musk ended his work with DOGE, it was clear that the group's cost-cutting achievements fell short of Musk's goals. A week before Trump won his second term, Musk said he expected to cut 'at least $2 trillion', without identifying a timeframe for doing it. He later lowered that to $1 trillion. But both figures were wildly unrealistic. Even if Musk could have eliminated every dollar of non-defence discretionary spending – everything from air traffic control, medical research, federal prosecutors and prisons to border control, US embassies and national parks – he wouldn't have reached his $1 trillion goal. As of early June, DOGE's online 'wall of receipts' accounting of federal dollars cut said that the government had cut $180 billion. But analyses by PolitiFact, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the conservative American Enterprise Institute showed that the tallies Musk provided were flawed. And total 2025 federal spending under Trump has continued to grow. Nat Malkus, an education policy specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said DOGE's cuts showed an 'appetite for recklessness', and its error and exaggeration-filled wall of receipts provided 'ample grounds for scepticism' about its accuracy. 'Beyond that, the receipts only cover a fraction of their actions, making their accomplishments and savings impossible to verify,' Malkus said. DOGE's 'wall of receipts' reported that the $180bn savings represented a combination of actions, including lease and grant cancellations, 'fraud and improper payment deletion' and eliminating employees. During their May 30 news conference, Musk predicted savings would rise to $1 trillion, but their public dispute made DOGE's future more uncertain. A few top lieutenants had already departed; dozens of DOGE employees remained. DOGE says its wall of receipts is incomplete: 'We are working to upload all of our receipts in a digestible and transparent manner consistent with applicable rules and regulations,' the website says, calling its list 'a subset of contract, grant, and lease cancellations, representing ~30 percent of total savings.' And it has errors. For example, DOGE said it would save $740,457 by ending a lease that housed records for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. But the federal government had already planned to end that lease in 2025. The property's leasing company told PolitiFact on May 30 that the government is still using the property and paying rent. If the government leaves before September, it will have to continue paying under the lease's terms, unless another tenant is secured. Some of DOGE's contract and grant cancellations are being litigated, and the government may ultimately be required to fulfil them. 'Even for grants and contracts that DOGE cut, the claimed savings may never be realised,' Joshua Sewell, a federal budget expert at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. The $180bn figure was aspirational and projected, PolitiFact found. 'Itemised, verifiable cuts – those with receipts – are roughly half that amount,' said Dominik Lett, a budget policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. 'Of those itemised cuts, there are numerous clerical errors and inflated savings values.' Government officials did not respond to our questions about how many federal employees were cut. The New York Times reported that as of May 12, the government reduced its workforce by roughly 135,000, including cuts and buyouts. That amounts to a tiny portion of the 2.4 million federal workforce, with similarly modest savings in salaries. The Reuters news agency, counting early retirements in addition to buyouts and firings, said the tally was 260,000. When 75,000 employees who took buyouts come off the books in October, that will save about $10bn a year, or 0.1 percent of federal spending, Jessica Riedl, an expert on the federal budget at the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote in an essay for The Atlantic. (Trump quoted the 75,000 figure during his May 30 news conference.) But the government could end up hiring contractors to perform some of that work, further shrinking those savings. Not every agency or department faced widespread cuts. The Justice Department's staffing was reduced by about 1 percent, The New York Times found. But nearly all employees were cut at USAID and AmeriCorps. Nearly half of the Education Department's staff were cut. Federal government spending continues to rise. In April 2025, total spending was $594bn, $27bn more than in April 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's a 5 percent increase. The largest spending decrease – $17bn – came in the Department of Education, which Trump promised to eliminate. But Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid outlays rose, as did some department spending, including in agriculture and defence. Some of DOGE's line items show savings of zero dollars, which a White House spokesperson said means that the money has been spent but won't be renewed, such as for news subscriptions or training. It also showed some negative values for grants; a State Department spokesperson said they were caused by an input error that had since been corrected, although it was still on the site as of about noon ET (16:00 GMT) on June 5. It's unclear whether DOGE's spending cuts will be permanent because federal law requires the executive branch to send proposed cuts, known as 'rescissions', to Congress for approval. The White House on June 3 sent a $9.4bn package of rescission cuts to Congress that includes cutting foreign aid. 'DOGE can kill projects, but the spending doesn't become savings until Congress votes to 'unspend' the money,' Malkus said. DOGE also increased some government costs, such as those incurred when defending against lawsuits. DOGE left no state untouched, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress. It terminated leases and grants to health departments, universities and volunteer programmes across the country. DOGE listed terminations of hundreds of millions of dollars in state health department grants, which represented some of the group's biggest 'savings'. These cuts targeted health departments in states including Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. The administration said the cuts mostly affected money used for the COVID-19 pandemic response. Twenty-three states challenged the cuts in a lawsuit that argued the move caused states 'tremendous chaos' including 'immediate harm to public health initiatives and the termination of large numbers of state and local public health employees and contractors'. In mid-May, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring the federal government to release the frozen funding. 'These funds support state and local health departments in combatting infectious diseases, as well as offering mental health services and funding addiction treatment programmes,' said Lynn Sutfin, a state Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson in Michigan, one of the state plaintiffs. Other cuts included nearly $400m in AmeriCorps grants, resulting in the terminations of more than 32,000 AmeriCorps members and volunteers, and the historic gutting of USAID, the nation's federal international humanitarian and development arm. One local AmeriCorps programme, Serve Louisiana, filed a lawsuit to stop cuts to its $700,000 grant that aimed to place 37 workers with Louisiana nonprofits, including a food bank, a library and Boys and Girls Clubs, through August. As of June 2, the lawsuit was ongoing. 'Our nonprofit partners are now scrambling to adapt without the help they counted on,' Serve Louisiana Executive Director Lisa Moore said. USAID programmes aimed to reduce hunger and disease and promote democracy globally. In fiscal year 2024, USAID made up 0.3 percent of the federal budget. Weeks after Trump's inauguration, DOGE froze nearly all of USAID's spending and terminated nearly all employees. Musk boasted on February 3 that DOGE had fed 'USAID into the wood chipper', and two weeks later he wielded a chainsaw at a conservative political event to symbolise what he said was his attack on federal bureaucracy. USAID's dismantling had sprawling global effects. In Ukraine – the largest recipient of USAID funds since Russia's 2022 invasion – regional media outlets lost funding and medical charities shuttered programmes that screened for and treated tuberculosis and HIV, NPR reported. US diplomats in Malawi said US funding cuts to the United Nations World Food Programme increased criminal activity, sexual violence and human trafficking in a large refugee camp, ProPublica reported. American embassy officials in Kenya said funding cuts to refugee camp food programmes led to violent demonstrations, ProPublica said. People also died because of the chaotic aid disruptions, according to Al Jazeera, NPR, The Associated Press, and other news organisations. The consequences are still unspooling. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that up to four million people in Africa might die from treatable diseases without USAID funding. Former USAID officials told Reuters that, because of the cuts, food rations worth $98m that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are decaying in warehouses and some are likely to be destroyed. The World Health Organization cautioned in March that USAID cuts could trigger a global increase in tuberculosis cases and deaths. Musk and Trump said that DOGE would ferret out fraud, too. Government reports predating Trump's current term show fraud is a real problem, but so far DOGE has not proven that it has recently uncovered mass fraud. A White House spokesperson said there had been 50 criminal referrals stemming from DOGE's work and pointed to three individuals charged for voting as a noncitizen in New York or Florida. Statements by federal prosecutors said that DOGE assisted with the cases. Such cases had been prosecuted before DOGE's creation.
