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<\/p>\nChina’s exports surged more than expected last month, with official data today showing that the global AI boom helped fuel demand for chips and computing equipment from the world’s second-largest economy.<\/p>\n
The figures came despite global trade disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, providing a much-needed boost to China, which is increasingly reliant on exports to fuel growth.<\/p>\n
Overseas shipments rose 27% year-on-year, beating the 19% forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists.<\/p>\n
The General Administration of Customs data also showed imports soared 36% easily outstripping the 26.1% estimated in the Bloomberg survey, and well up from the 27.4% jump seen in May.<\/p>\n
“Trade values took another big leg up in June. This predominantly reflects the recent surge in semiconductor prices on the back of the AI boom,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, of Capital Economics, said in a note.<\/p>\n
The value of China’s semiconductor exports more than doubled from the same month a year ago and rose $2.7 billion from May, while data processing equipment shipments also rose 53.1% from a year earlier.<\/p>\n
But that expansion was “entirely a price story caused by the ongoing shortage of memory chips”, Evans-Pritchard said, noting that the volume of semiconductor exports actually fell year-on-year in June.<\/p>\n
“Surging semiconductor prices are playing a key role in pushing up import values,” rather than domestic consumption surging, he said.<\/p>\n
Automobile exports jumped 69.6% year-on-year, reflecting strong demand for Chinese electric vehicles, he added.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shipments to the US rose 13.9% to $43.5 billion, putting China’s trade surplus with its superpower rival at $28.9 billion.<\/p>\n
Ties between Washington and Beijing have stabilised since US President Donald Trump visited Beijing in May, but the persistent trade imbalance remains a source of friction between the two.<\/p>\n
China is also locked in a simmering trade feud with the European Union, with which it recorded a trade surplus of $32.9 billion in June, a rise from $30.7 billion in May.<\/p>\n
June’s data “showcases the competitiveness and resilience of China’s manufacturing sector”, Zhang Zhiwei, of Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note.<\/p>\n
“It also put further pressure on the trade tension between China and its trading partners, Europe in particular,” he said.<\/p>\n
The volume of rare earths exports sank 34% last month and 6.4% on-year in the first six months of the year as Beijing tightened restrictions on the critical elements.<\/p>\n
China accounts for around two-thirds of the total global production of the minerals, which are used to make everything from smartphones to missiles, and has wielded its dominance in the sector as a weapon in trade wars with the West.<\/p>\n
China’s overall trade surplus hit $126 billion last month, up from $105 billion in May, a gap that is worrying for European economies and other governments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China’s exports surged more than expected last month, with official data today showing that the global AI boom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-549208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549208","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=549208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}