The value of China's exports to the United States exceeds the cost of its imports from the country to a record $31 billion in August. Exports have continued to accelerate despite U.S. tariffs taking effect in the full month of August according to analysts.
In comparison, the country posted a record $275.8 billion trade surplus with the United States in 2017.
China's exports to the United States continued to perform impressively, increasing 13.4 percent to $ 44.4 billion in August compared to 13.3 percent growth in July, the Associated Press reported. The country's U.S. imports had only shown minimal slowing but still rose to 11.1 percent to $13.3 billion compared to July's 11.8 percent.
On the other hand, the amount of China's imports from the United States exceeds the value of its exports from the country. China's trade deficit with the United States increased by $28 billion in July compared to $29 billion in June.
Analysts believed that this new data will push the Trump administration to administer new trade strategy to close China's trade gap with the U.S. With this, it can be said that the ongoing US-China trade war will linger to unspecified level and length.
China's vast trade gap with the United States has, in fact, one of the mains reason why U.S. President Donald Trump started the trade war against Beijing. Trump's administration suspected that China is deliberately pushing the trade deficit aside from accusations that Beijing is breaching intellectual property rights and illegal transfer of technical knowledge.
China has always denied these accusations. In May, Beijing had even agreed to close its trade gap with the United States by increasing its purchase of American soybeans and natural gas from Washington. President Trump had nevertheless gone ahead with hiking tariffs against Beijing.
Elsewhere in the world, China's exports increased by 12.2 percent to $217.4 billion. The country's global imports rose 20.9 percent to $189.5 billion. These may have been decreases at 12.6 percent and 21 percent respectively compared to July's exports and imports, still, analysts considered them minimal impact.
While China posted a 9.8 percent growth in export in August, Reuters noted that it was the weakest growth rate the country achieved since March. The achievement had actually fallen slightly short of analysts' forecasts of 10.1 percent.
Still, the slight growth happened remarkably amid U.S. tariffs imposed on as much as $50 billion of Chinese exports that were already in full effect in August, Reuters noted.
Some analysts concluded that manufacturers had rushed to purchase supplies and filled their inventories ahead of Trump's first tariff hike in July. This may have driven the growth in China's trade surplus.
What is left to be seen is whether China would run a trade deficit with the United States instead of trade surplus if US-China trade war reached a level where there are no longer Chinese goods being exported to Washington. At this point, the true impact of the trade war on China may finally materialize, analysts said.
On the other hand, China still has the European Union as an alternate market. The country's exports to EU rose 11 percent to $37 billion and imports increased by 15 percent to $24.9 billion, creating a surplus of $6.1 billion.
On Friday, Trump warned that he was ready to impose taxes on $267 billion of goods separately from the $200 billion in imports of which tariffs will take effect in the coming days.
