China’s Trade Surplus Tops $1 Trillion for Second Straight Year
China's goods surplus hit $1.04 trillion in the first 10 months of 2026 as exports jumped 35.2% in October, with AI-related trade driving imports higher.
China’s goods trade surplus passed $1 trillion for the second year in a row, reaching $1.04 trillion in the first 10 months of 2026, according to customs data released Tuesday and reported by CNBC. China has never reached that mark so quickly. Exports rose 35.2% in October from a year earlier. Imports grew even faster, up 41.6%, as purchases of AI-related technology, metals and energy surged. The faster import growth slowed the monthly surplus to its smallest increase in six months.
What the numbers show
Export growth in October beat the 33.5% forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts, CNBC reported, though it eased slightly from September’s 36.3%. The import gain was much bigger than expected. Analysts had forecast about 32%. CNBC called the 41.6% rise the strongest since May 2021, though one part of its report gave the year as 2011.
The figures look smaller in China’s own currency. The Global Times, a state-run newspaper in Beijing, reported the General Administration of Customs figures, which put October exports up 28.7% and imports up 34.7% when measured in yuan. The gap between the dollar and yuan figures most likely reflects exchange-rate moves. In yuan terms, China’s total goods trade for January through October came to 44.81 trillion yuan (about $6.3 trillion), up 20% from a year earlier. That figure includes 25.99 trillion yuan of exports and 18.82 trillion yuan of imports. The newspaper added that both exports and imports have grown by double digits for six months running.
Demand linked to artificial intelligence stood out on both sides of the ledger. Citing customs data, the Global Times reported that October exports of integrated circuits, the chips at the heart of computers and data centers, reached $39.59 billion, up 137.1%. Other gains:
- Car exports rose 37.6% to $19.69 billion.
- Mobile phone exports rose 13.2% to $17.57 billion.
- Rare earth exports climbed 45% to $82.24 million.
On the import side, CNBC calculated from official figures that the value of high-tech imports jumped about 72%. Crude oil imports rose about 41%, liquefied natural gas about 50% and coal about 60%. “Imports were still dominated by AI trade,” Tianchen Xu, a senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC.
Why it matters
China’s surplus has become a major source of tension with its trading partners, many of whom complain about a flood of low-cost Chinese goods. The country posted a record $1.2 trillion surplus for all of 2025, the first year it crossed $1 trillion. The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly pressed Beijing to rely less on exports and more on spending by its own households.
Consumer spending in China is still weak. Retail sales grew just 1.1% in September, CNBC reported, while the government is aiming for 4.5% to 5% economic growth this year. The import surge does mean China bought more from the rest of the world in October. But CNBC’s breakdown shows those purchases were concentrated in technology, metals such as copper, and energy, not consumer goods.
For the United States, the data shows trade between the two countries picking up from a low base. Chinese exports to the US rose 32.9% in October and imports from the US grew nearly 35%, leaving China with a $32.7 billion surplus with the US for the month. Shipments to the US are up 12.1% so far this year. That gain partly reflects a 20% drop last year after Washington raised tariffs.
Europe’s position is more lopsided. China’s exports to the European Union rose 24.4% in October while its imports from the bloc fell more than 4%, widening the monthly surplus to $33.4 billion, according to CNBC. Under a deal reached in October, Chinese hybrid car imports into the EU will be capped at 350,000 a year starting Dec. 1. That cap is above the roughly 300,000 hybrids China shipped to Europe last year but far below the annualized pace of about 800,000 seen over the past three months. “Additional EU trade measures targeting China look plausible to us,” Yuanliu Hu, an analyst at Citi Research, told CNBC.
What comes next
Economists expect the surplus to keep growing, though perhaps more slowly. “China remains well on pace for a new record high for the trade surplus by year-end despite a miss in October,” Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at Dutch bank ING, told CNBC. Others see signs of cooling. Capital Economics, a London-based research firm, estimated that exports fell 2% from September after adjusting for seasonal swings. “Momentum looks to have slowed,” Nguyen Hoang Nam, a China economist at the firm, told CNBC. Citi expects export growth could slow to 8% in 2027 as the comparison with weak earlier figures becomes tougher and global AI investment levels off.
Politics adds more uncertainty. In September, Washington and Beijing agreed to extend their broader trade truce by two months, to January. The truce includes export-control waivers for some critical minerals and an arrangement on the port fees each country charges the other’s ships. Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet for the third time this year at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, where trade is expected to be on the agenda.
