Testy Tone Over Yuan Bodes Ill For Obama Visit To Beijing

An early sign of of some of the bickering over trade and exchange rates that will be going on behind closed doors during  U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to China: At the APEC meeting in Singapore, the two countries couldn’t agree on the wording of the meeting’s communiqué in the part that referred to currencies. [...]

Trade Dispute With U.S. Jaw-Jaw, Not War-War

The U.S. puts tariffs on Chinese tyres. China launches an anti-dumping, anti-subsidy investigation into imports of American car products and chicken meet. Such is the tit-for-tat pettiness of international trade disputes.
This is jaw-jaw, not war-war, even allowing for the fact that the American decision was being cast as the Obama administration’s first big test on [...]

PetroChina, Exxon Strike Biggest Australia-China Trade Deal

PetroChina is to buy 2.25 million tons a year of liquefied natural gas from ExxonMobil’s part of the Gorgon gas field off Australia’s northwest coast (Release). The 20-year deal is valued at $41 billion and shows the growing economic ties between China and Australia despite the current political tensions over the Rio Four spying case [...]

Beijing Starts To Play By WTO Rules. Good.

There was a time when Beijing quietly settled WTO trade complaints against China.  In the first five years after joining the organization in 2001, it didn’t contest a single complaint against it. No longer. It says it will contest the newly lodged complaints from the U.S. and the E.U. that it unfairly limits exports of [...]

China’s February Exports Reflect Grim Trade Picture

As we’d feared, the February trade figures were grim, with exports down a quarter from a year earlier regardless of what had been expected to be a mitigating factor of a shortened trading month because of New Year.
It marked the fourth consecutive month of year-on-year declines as the global economic slowdown takes its toll. With [...]

Worsening Trade Figures Expected This Week

Container volume at the ports was down 17% in February year-on-year, Xinhua reports. That heralds bad news for the monthly trade figures expected later this week. We’re expecting not just a fourth consecutive month of declining exports, but a bigger percentage fall than January’s 17.5%. Stimulus measures may be showing signs of helping the domestic [...]

Latest U.S.-China WTO Trade Dispute Baffles

There is a certain ritual to complaints to the World Trade Organization. And like many rituals its meaning can be opaque to outsiders.
The WTO action the U.S. instigated on Friday against China falls into that class. Washington alleges that Beijing is using export subsidies to promote Chinese-branded exports through cash grant rewards for exporting, preferential [...]

China Loses Its First WTO Case

China’s appeal against the World Trade Organization’s ruling in July that it was imposing discriminatory taxation on imported U.S. auto parts has failed. The WTO Appellate Body upheld the original ruling that China is violating trade rules by requiring automakers operating there to buy most components from local suppliers or face higher duties. This is [...]

China’s November Export Figures May Show First Fall In 7 Years

21st Century Business Herald is reporting that November’s export figures will show the first year on year monthly fall in exports in seven years (here via Reuters).
Citing customs sources, the paper says exports were $100 billion plus for the month but less than the $118 billion exported in November 2007. Imports also fell, the paper [...]

July Inflation Figures Distract From Strength Of Trade

Chinese stocks may have taken a nosedive following the latest monthly wholesale inflation figures that were the highest in a decade at 10% (9.1% was the forecast), but investors should have been paying greater attention to the trade numbers. Both exports and imports in July beat forecasts, regardless of a slowing global economy and anaemic [...]