China's exports fall for first time in eight months
BEIJING
China's exports fell in October for the first time in eight months, official data showed on Nov. 7, as trade tensions flared in the weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping met U.S. counterpart Donald Trump.
Shipments dropped 1.1 percent year on year, missing a Bloomberg forecast of a 2.9 percent rise.
Imports in the same month rose 1 percent, China's General Administration of Customs said. That was well off September's reading and short of the 2.7 percent climb estimated in the Bloomberg forecast.
China and the U.S. reached a detente in their trade war after Xi and Trump met in South Korea at the end of October.
That put a precarious pause on months of tit-for-tat measures between the economic and technological powerhouses as the leaders agreed to suspend a raft of measures for a year.
China's imports from the U.S. fell 11.6 percent month-on-month in October, the customs data showed, while its shipments in the other direction rose 1.8 percent.
Chinese exporters had been "frontloading their trade in order to avoid high tariffs in the US", Zhiwei Zhang, economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, said in a note.
The country's shipments to the U.S. jumped 8.6 percent in September from August after falling 11.8 percent on-month from July.
"It seems the frontloading finally faded in October. As the trade war is put on hold for one year, exports will likely normalise," Zhang said.
But, he warned: "Now that export momentum weakens, China needs to rely more on domestic demand."
