China’s trade surplus hit a record in 2024, but the threat of U.S. tariffs looms.
The CSCL Globe container ship, a container ship owned and operated by COSCO Shipping and previously, China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL), at the Euromax Terminal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Credit: Kees Torn via Wikimedia Commons
By nearly all measures, China’s almost $1 trillion trade surplus for 2024 is the largest by any nation since World War Two. The already-vast gap between exports and imports in the world’s second-largest economy widened by 20 percent year on year, even as fears grew across the globe — particularly in Washington and Brussels — that Chinese companies are simply shipping more and more goods abroad that they can’t sell at home.
Despite such worries, China’s exports to the United Stat
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