Chinese Exports Hit Record for April
HONG KONG — China’s exports surged last month to a record level, while China’s imports lagged, causing its trade surplus to widen sharply from the first three months of this year, to $11.43 billion. Even though this is lower than last year, it is still high enough to increase trade frictions with the United States and other countries. This increased the worries that China is using a weak currency to claim an unusually larger share of global job creation.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics The average price of goods imported from China to the United States, adjusted for quality improvements, jumped 0.4 percent in April from the previous month and was up 2.8 percent from a year earlierannounced Tuesday morning in Washington.
However, the import price statistics is confirming that China is becoming a contributor to higher prices in the United States. A face reflecting change that comes after many years in which the price of Chinese goods was flat or falling.
The newest data from China indicates its trade surplus essentially disappeared in the first three months of this year. Rising commodity prices drove up the cost of China’s imports, while exports tend to be weak early in the year, partly because of factory shutdowns that last one to three weeks for Chinese New Year.
With China giving priority to domestic consumption its economy is shifting from an export-led model for growth to a normal economic model . However it is still too early to suggest that the country’s overall trade surplus was already disappearing. Since only half of China’s imports are related to domestic demand, so they have to grow at twice the rate of exports in order to reduce the trade surplus.
Chinese exports to the United States actually grew faster last month than imports from the United States. Rising Chinese imports tend to be in categories like oil from the Mideast as well as luxury goods and sophisticated machinery from Europe.
China’s General Administration of Customs said that exports rose 25.9 percent in April compared with a year earlier, to a record $155.69 billion, exceeding a previous record of $154.12 billion in December. The increase was somewhat surprising because the spring is traditionally a weak period for Chinese exports, before large quantities of goods start to be shipped over the summer for the Christmas shopping season.
Chinese imports rose to $144.26 billion. Labor costs are surging by 10 to 30 percent a year in China. Many companies are searching for alternatives to manufacturing in China, but finding that nowhere else offers China’s combination of a large labor supply, world-class highways and ports and strongly pro-business policies, including a strict ban on independent labor unions that tended to hold down wages until very recently.
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Chinese Exports Hit Record for April
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