Last year’s bruising trade war between Washington and Beijing — which at one point saw reciprocal tariffs in the triple digits — led to a 20 percent plunge year-on-year in China’s exports to the United States, with imports falling 14.6 percent.
But other trade partners more than filled the gap, increasing Chinese exports overall by 5.5 percent in 2025, while imports fell flat in dollar terms.
Trade in 2025 “surpassed 45 trillion yuan ($6.4 trillion) for the first time, setting a new historical high,” vice customs minister Wang Jun told a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday.
“It should be noted that some countries politicise economic and trade issues, restricting high-tech product exports to China under various pretexts,” Wang said, in an apparent reference to the US tariffs and export controls.
“Otherwise, we would have imported even more.”
December’s figures showed strong growth, with exports up 6.6 percent and imports jumping 5.7 percent year-on-year.
“We expect this resilience to continue through 2026,” said Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, in a note.
“One risk to the export outlook is that the trade truce with the US doesn’t last. Trump’s threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on countries doing business with Iran underscores the potential for renewed trade tensions,” Huang said.
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The White House has jousted with Beijing over Trump’s sweeping tariffs but reached a broad truce with China after a major escalation in the spring.
Zhiwei Zhang at Pinpoint Asset Management said China’s “strong export growth helps to mitigate the weak domestic demand”.
“Combined with the booming stock market and stable US-China relations, the government is likely to keep the macro policy stance unchanged at least in the first quarter,” he said.
Looking ahead to 2026, China’s market will “open more” and “still be an opportunity for the world” Wang Jun said Wednesday.
