A cargo ship loaded with foreign trade containers heads to Qingdao Port in Qingdao City, Shandong Province, China, on November 5, 2025.
Cost Photo | Null Photo | Getty Images
China’s exports fell in October for the first time in nearly two years due to strong base effects and a slowdown in companies’ front-loading ahead of the US-China summit.
Overseas shipments in October decreased by 1.1% year-on-year in US dollar terms, marking the first decline since March 2024, when exports fell by a staggering 7.5%.
Economists in a Reuters poll had expected growth of 3%, compared with September’s 8.3% growth, the fastest in six months, and the drop in exports was unexpected.
Imports rose 1% last month, missing expectations for a 3.2% rise, as a prolonged housing and employment market weakness continued to weigh on consumer demand. In September, it rose 7.4%.
“The advance seems to have finally worn off in October,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, predicting that China’s exports would normalize after trade restrictions were postponed for a year.
Chinese exporters and U.S. buyers breathed a sigh of relief last week after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement during talks in South Korea, easing a situation that threatened to tip bilateral relations into a full-blown trade war.
According to customs statistics, China’s exports to the United States in October fell 25% from the same month last year, marking the seventh consecutive month of double-digit declines. Imports fell by nearly 23% last month.
The two countries agreed to lift a series of punitive measures, including high tariffs and export restrictions on critical minerals and advanced technology, while Beijing pledged to increase purchases of U.S. soybeans and work with the U.S. to crack down on fentanyl leaks.
Macquarie Group estimates that after the trade cease-fire, the effective U.S. tariff rate on Chinese exports has fallen to 31%.
Last month’s sharp slowdown was partly due to a high base in October 2024, when exports grew at the fastest pace in more than two years.
In the first 10 months of this year, shipments from China to the United States fell 17.8%, imports fell 12.6%, and the trade surplus shrank 20% year-on-year to $233 billion.
Despite the decline in U.S.-bound products, overall Chinese exports rose 5.3% this year as of October as Chinese exporters sought alternative markets or indirectly rerouted goods to the world’s largest economy.
Exports to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union and Africa increased by 14.3%, 7.5% and 26.1% respectively in the first 10 months.
China accumulated a trade surplus of more than $964.8 billion in the first 10 months of this year, a 23% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Oxford Economics raised its forecast for China’s exports to grow by 3.5% to 5% a year in real terms, boosting the Chinese government’s efforts to deepen industrialization in its next five-year development plan and efforts by Chinese exporters to diversify into regional and emerging markets, Oxford Economics said in a report on Thursday.
The research firm has revised upward its forecast for China’s real GDP growth rate to 4.5% in 2026 and 4.4% in 2027.
“Now that export momentum has weakened, China needs to rely more on domestic demand,” Zhang added, predicting that policymakers would come up with more supportive fiscal measures in the first quarter of next year.
Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Group, echoed these sentiments, saying Beijing would turn to expanding domestic demand as the main growth driver to meet its annual GDP target “at some point between 2026 and 2030”.
The Chinese government will likely maintain its 2026 growth target of “about 5%” and adjust its stimulus to avoid under- or over-achieving.
In recent months, the Chinese government has stepped up efforts to curb overcapacity in the industry in response to falling prices and fierce price competition. Profits of major industrial companies rose 3.2% in the first nine months.
Economic data in October suggested manufacturing activity contracted for the seventh consecutive month as trade tensions with the U.S. government reignited.
