{"id":305364,"date":"2026-02-19T03:18:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T03:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305364\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T03:18:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T03:18:23","slug":"tariffs-caused-just-small-china-trade-diversion-ecb-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305364\/","title":{"rendered":"Tariffs Caused Just Small China Trade Diversion, ECB Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Alexander Weber and Mark Schroers<\/p>\n<p>Feb 18, 2026 (Bloomberg) \u2013Donald Trump\u2019s trade levies aren\u2019t the main reason why China is exporting more to other parts of the world, a European Central Bank study showed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny tariff-related diversion appears modest and confined to a narrow set of products, indicating limited spillovers from US tariffs to third destinations,\u201d researchers Julien Le Roux and Tajda Spital said.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, \u201cweak domestic demand has pushed Chinese firms to channel excess capacity abroad, supported by falling export prices, competitiveness gains reinforced by a weak currency, and state-led expansion of manufacturing capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The US levies have fed concern at the ECB that China may divert goods to the euro area, increasing competition for firms in the currency bloc. More dovish policymakers also see this as a downside risk for inflation, which is already forecast to undershoot 2%.<\/p>\n<p>France\u2019s Francois Villeroy de Galhau said this month that rising imports from China and lower costs for those products in the second half of 2025 make for a \u201cquite strong disinflationary effect.\u201d Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel has, meanwhile, pointed out that the fallout from Chinese diversion has been \u201cweaker than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chinese exports rose 5.5% last year, up from 4.6% in 2024, the ECB said. While shipments to the US dropped by 20% \u2014 strongly driven by tariffs \u2014 those to the euro zone rose by 8%. Other Asian nations, Africa and Latin America also saw an increase.<\/p>\n<p>The ECB study cautioned that it may still be too early to have a full picture of the tariff fallout because of \u201canticipatory behavior, implementation lags at customs, shipping delays and other factors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9\u00a02026\u00a0Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gcaptain-article-trust-footer\" style=\"font-size:0.8em;color:#999;margin-top:1.5em;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gcaptain.com\/editorial-standards\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Editorial Standards<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/gcaptain.com\/corrections\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Corrections<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/gcaptain.com\/about\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">About gCaptain<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gcaptain-wire-disclosure\" style=\"font-size:0.8em;color:#999;margin:0.3em 0 0;\">This article contains reporting from Bloomberg, published under license.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gcaptain.com\/wp-content\/themes\/gCaptain-Theme\/assets\/images\/gcaptain-new-gray-logo.svg\" alt=\"logo\"\/><br \/>\n\t\tSubscribe for Daily Maritime Insights<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for gCaptain\u2019s newsletter and never miss an update<\/p>\n<p>        \u2014 trusted by our 107,255 members<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Alexander Weber and Mark Schroers Feb 18, 2026 (Bloomberg) \u2013Donald Trump\u2019s trade levies aren\u2019t the main reason why&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,114,113,61,60,4162,5894],"class_list":["post-305364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tariffs","tag-trump-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}