China's exports closed last year on a growth spurt, lifting its trade surplus to a record $1.2 trillion in 2025 and extending a boom that has seen factories sidestep Donald Trump's tariffs by pushing deeper into markets beyond the U.S. The resilience was the biggest surprise for an ailing Chinese economy last year and could provide a cushion in the months ahead.
Defying expectations of a slowdown, exports accelerated last month, a notable feat given the high comparison base from a year earlier, when Trump's re-election to the presidency triggered a panicked wave of front-loading orders. The 6.6% gain in December 2025 was the fastest in three months and exceeded every forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists. "We expect export resilience to extend into this year, with exports remaining an important growth driver and partially offsetting weaker domestic demand," Barclays Plc economists, including Ying Zhang, wrote in a report.
The combined increase in shipments to Southeast Asia and Europe more than offset a deepening contraction in sales to the U.S. last year. A surge in exports of high-end goods illustrates the headway China has made in moving up the value chain, which has also led to shrinking imports of products such as cars. From a supply chain perspective, as supply chains shift overseas, the construction of factories elsewhere, partly funded by Chinese investment, is pulling up demand for Chinese components, equipment and machinery.
According to Bloomberg Economics, China's stronger-than-expected export growth in December shows its export engine continued to support the economy in the final quarter of 2025 even as domestic drivers weakened. From a supply chain perspective, this trend reveals that nearshoring and China+1 strategies routed through Vietnam, Mexico and India are not structurally eliminating Chinese intermediate exports, but extending them in a different form. For global BCOs, this requires tariff planning that accounts not only for country of origin but also for the broader "value-chain origin" logic.
