China’s Trade Surplus Surges as Exports Power Ahead Despite US Sanctions

China’s export sector rebounded sharply in November, widening the country’s already vast trade surplus and underscoring how Chinese manufacturing continues to surge despite sustained United States (US) sanctions and tariffs.

New customs data shows goods exports rising strongly year on year, even as domestic demand kept import growth subdued.

China’s goods trade surplus came to stand at over $1 trillion for the first 11 months of the year after recording a trade surplus of $111.7 billion in November, driven by a 5.9% year-on-year jump in exports. This marks a striking turnaround from earlier in the year and signals renewed strength across China’s industrial base at a time when global conditions and geopolitical pressures might otherwise have suggested weakness.

The strongest export gains came from high-tech and capital-intensive industries. Ship exports soared 26.8% year on year, semiconductors grew 24.7%, and auto exports rose 16.7%. High-tech exports as a whole grew 6.6% year –on year, a powerful indication of China’s deepening competitiveness in advanced manufacturing –including sectors targeted directly by Washington’s technology-export controls and industrial sanctions.

While traditional consumer goods tied heavily to US buyers underperformed (toys fell 12.1%, footwear dropped 10.7%, and furniture declined 5.9%) these losses were easily offset by China’s growing dominance in higher-value manufacturing. The pattern suggests that US tariff pressure is hurting older export categories but doing little to slow China’s shift up the value chain.

The US remains the weak spot in China’s export geography. Shipments to the US fell 28.6% year on year in November, reflecting the lingering impact of tariffs and sanctions as well as muted American demand. Despite a temporary easing in trade tensions, the numbers show that Chinese exporters are still taking significant strain in the US market.

But China more than compensated for the US decline through stronger performance elsewhere. Exports to the European Union surged 14.8% year on year, shipments to Japan increased 4.3%, and exports to Southeast Asia grew 8.2%.

These markets have now become the primary engines of China’s export rebound, illustrating how Chinese firms have diversified away from the US both to reduce political risk and to capture new commercial opportunities.

Analysts say this data suggests that in as far as the US sought to use tariffs to harm the Chinese economy, that strategy erred in tariffing a broad array of competitive manufacturing economies beyond China – causing manufacturers to keep their operations in China and buyers not to source goods from other markets to any massive extent.

Imports, by contrast, continued to highlight weakness in China’s domestic economy. November import growth came in at just 1.9% year on year, a soft outcome reflecting subdued household spending, a struggling property sector, and depressed demand for materials such as lumber and steel.

A major structural shift is also visible in automotive trade flows. With Chinese domestic automakers expanding rapidly, foreign motorcar imports have collapsed 38.3% year on year, sharply reducing China’s reliance on imported vehicles and contributing to the wider imbalance between exports and imports.

China’s widening trade surplus has already prompted concern in Europe, where policymakers have warned of possible tariff responses if trade imbalances are not addressed. For Beijing, however, the surplus is reinforcing short-term economic resilience by supporting growth at a time when domestic demand remains fragile.