18 ms·

Chinese exports plunge 25% in February

115 points by mgdo 11y ago

tim333 11y ago
Sounds scary but: """ According to Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, the severe fall in exports largely reflected changes in the timing of the Lunar Year in China this year. "In 2015, the holiday fell unusually late which meant that more of the pre-holiday rush to meet orders and less of the post holiday disruptions took place in February, causing exports to jump 48.9 percent year-on-year," he said. """
- sharetea 11y ago
  some other views: ""China will face a more challenging situation in trade this year than 2015. Both imports and exports in February fell more than our expectations." ""China's exports declined the most since May 2009, suggesting that the overly strong CNY exchange rate has become an obstacle for the external sector" ""February's trade data is really poor and that will exert depreciation pressure on the yuan." http://news.forexlive.com/!/china-export-collapse-in-january-and-february-analyst-responses-20160308 http://news.forexlive.com/!/china-export-collapse-in-january...
- electic 11y ago
  If anyone is interested the Shanghai Containerized Shipping Index is a great source to monitor exports.[1] [1] http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp
  - rrggrr 11y ago
    The overall trend is down, consistent with the tenor of the OP article, and consistent with most of the economic news coming out of China.
  - nutmeg 11y ago
    I am not familiar with any of this, but could a lower SCSI be caused by more shipping supply being available as opposed to fewer containers being shipped? Is there an index that tracks the number of containers shipped?
    - electic 11y ago
      These are the number of individual containers exported from a port. Has nothing to do with capacity, ships, etc.
- jordanb 11y ago
  One holiday puts exports down double digits for two months in a row eh? Must be one crazy party.
  - fatjokes 11y ago
    It's the largest mass human migration on earth, and it happens annually.
    - discordance 11y ago
      There's a good documentary that covers this migration - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film)
  - jzwinck 11y ago
    It is indeed. So crazy in fact that I couldn't get a hotel room in a major city with an international airport even three days after the holiday. In New Zealand.
    - toomanybeersies 11y ago
      Hell, it's so big that they had a big parade in Wellington for it.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    I believe many workers will travel home to celebrate the holiday which must be hell compared to Thanksgiving air travel.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- wheat74 11y ago
  Perhaps this is a dumb question, but if it fell by 25% and the prediction was it falling by 15%, do they mean to imply those who made that month's prediction weren't aware of the particulars of Lunar New Year?
  - spangry 11y ago
    Not a dumb question at all. Markets often behave irrationally, but they aren't that stupid. Market expectations (-14.5% export growth) definitely factor in seasonality. So it's very bad news. To make matters worse, import growth (-13.8%) was also lower than market expectations (-12%). As mentioned below, this suggests contracting overseas demand for Chinese exports AND contracting domestic consumption. Which adds up to lower than expected Chinese economic production. We'll probably see another Chinese stimulus package soon. Hopefully they manage to deploy it without exacerbating the capital mis-allocation and higher private debt that the previous one caused (mostly poured into residential real-estate construction and speculation).
- SixSigma 11y ago
  But if you couple that with "China to cut 1.8m jobs in coal and steel sectors" [1] it does make one take notice [1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/china-to-cut-jobs-in-coal-and-steel-sectors http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/china-to-cut...
- josefresco 11y ago
  Pretty much this - Nothing happens in China during the new year celebration. We've had recent contact with Chinese companies who all warned us that there would be no progress until after the holiday.
- sharetea 11y ago
  other evidences of economic activity collapse from China - China Layoffs: 5-6 Million State Jobs, 1.8 Million in Coal, Steel http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/china-layoffs-5-6-million-jobs/2016/03/02/id/716996/ http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/china-layoffs-5-6-million-job... - Foreign Funds Exit China Bond Market as Risks Escalate http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/global-funds-bolt-out-as-china-opens-door-to-yuan-bond-market http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/global-fun... - Hong Kong residential home sales plunged 70 per cent in February from a year earlier to a 25-year low http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/hong-kong-residential-sales-plunge-70-per-cent-20160307-gnc8fw http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/hong-kong-residen... - Zoomlion, the country’s leading construction machinery and sanitation equipment maker, announced a 90% net profit drop in 2015 http://fortune.com/2016/02/10/china-housing-market-mortgage-down-payment/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/10/china-housing-market-mortgage-... - Twice As Many Expatriates Leaving China Than Arriving http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/02/09/twice-as-many-expatriates-leaving-china-than-arriving-moving-company-says/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/02/09/twice-as-many-... - Manufacturers (Panasonic, Samsung, Foxconn) step up search for low cost alternative to China http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1863709/manufacturers-step-search-low-cost-alternative-china http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1863709/manuf... - Phantom Goods Disguise Billions in China Illicit Money Outflows http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-china-capital-b24a681e-e5eb-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f-20160309-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-china-capital-...
- maw 11y ago
  Yeah, fine, but that's no reason to not act irrational and panicky!
- pkaye 11y ago
  So this was expected because the holidays are preplanned and the drop is in line with the predictions?
gruez 11y ago
Title is misleading. From the second line of article: Exports dropped sharply by 25.4% from a year earlier I'm not sure about anyone else, but "exports plunge 25% in February" makes me think that it plunged 25% from January to February.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  It's common (in the economics/financial press) to refer to year-on-year changes in this way. This article is in the mainstream press, though, so perhaps they should have spelled it out.
wrong_variable 11y ago
HN LOVES the idea of bad things happening. As someone who's clients are all Chinese - there is not a better time to be in the Chinese market. China is quickly translating into a service powerhouse, I wouldn't be surprised if china will stop needing wallstreet to finance itself within the next 5 years. If you are in the SaaS business - china is where you need to be to make bank. Chinese millennials are rich, optimistic and are amazingly good adopters of technology. The chinese software market is also extremely young - unlike the saturated western ones. So even building simple service-automation/web-service will make you millions. Its almost laughable to me these days that an amazing company like netflix can only charge 5 dollars in america while in china people are spending insane amount of money online for really simple services.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if china will stop needing wallstreet to finance itself within the next 5 years. China doesn't currently need Wall Street, they have their own powerful central bank and tons of domestically held debt thanks to their very high export surplus and savings rate.
- partiallypro 11y ago
  No one is saying you can't make money in China anymore, only that the data coming out of China is really bad considering their huge growth over the past 20 years. They have a growth target between 6.5% and 7%, in the U.S. we would kill for that...but in China that is very much subpar.
  - dragonbonheur 11y ago
    US citizens getting worried about China's finances and growth are akin to peasants getting worried about the finances of noblemen. Right now the US Congress is seriously considering giving corporations a "tax forgiveness" to the tune of $400 billion. When US citizens are abroad, they have to pay US taxes even if they haven't set foot on US territory for years. That rule doesn't apply to corporations. Do you find that fair? The establishment media continually fools US citizens by giving them distractions such as: "China is crashing!!!" - "Chinese growth is going down!!!" - "Corruption in China rampant!!!" - "China preparing for WAR!!!" Easy distractions like these have only one purpose: to distract US citizens from noticing that they are being defrauded by everyone they put in charge to run their country. It's as simple as that.
Mikeb85 11y ago
Not too long ago I pointed out an increase in anti-China propaganda. Seems this definitely is the case. A 25% drop from a 50% increase the year before (due to what is probably one of, if not the biggest holidays in the world) is still an increase from 2 years prior. Anyhow, this is just funny timing things. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/exports http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/exports If you set the chart to 10 years, you'll notice it's more or less in line with the average. If there is a slowdown (hard to tell), it's fairly mild, and would be more or less consistent with worldwide demand. It's just very dramatic for one month because of the holiday. In a year, I have no doubt that, contrary to what some observers are claiming, China will be alive and well.
- contingencies 11y ago
  Yes, that's what it looks like from here on the ground.
- bsdpython 11y ago
  It probably has little to do with anti-China propaganda. Financial news has always reported junk like this with clickbait headlines and a few cherry picked numbers to make a story from nothing.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
a3n 11y ago
It'd be cool if the US and other involved countries weren't so wary of China militarily. If we didn't have to counter their military, that could free up money to buy more of their exports. It seems kind of silly to threaten, however obliquely, your customers.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Different orders of magnitude. We spend approximately $600 million every year on countering all conventional military threats, all over the world. China exports around $2T worth of goods every year. China dropping the ball militarily would not affect our priorities at all.
  - ojbyrne 11y ago
    I think you meant $600 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
  - samcheng 11y ago
    Sorry, but your figure is wrong. The annual US Military budget is about $600 Billion, not $600 million. That's 3.5% of US GDP and a non-trivial amount; it's more than the entirety of US trade with China (imports in 2015 were $481 billion). It's half of US Government discretionary spending. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending-united-states/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi... https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      I made a typo about the figure, sorry about that. People throw around these facts, comparing them to one another, without really understanding the scales involved. Half of discretionary government spending should be on the military. Sure, other countries that rely on bigger nations for their defense can get away with much smaller defense budgets, but a powerful hegemonic nation whose stability the entire world relies on needs a dominant military, and those aren't cheap. The primary role of a state that is serving its people and not the other way around is foreign policy and defense. What kept the Roman Empire alive for so many centuries was that other nations simply feared to openly challenge it militarily. Even banding together, they could not hope to withstand Roman legions. You made another comparison, that military spending is larger than the whole of China's trade with the US. That's irrelevant, it only means that the US is in a completely different league economically than China. Government spending is ultimately limited by its nation's economy. A command economy can spend more on things relative to the nation's GDP, but that limits the potential for the command economy to grow. This undeniable fact has driven China's domestic policy for decades. China has to modernize into a more liberal economy, otherwise it won't be able to survive. But it hasn't quite done that yet. The US, on the other hand, has had for its entire run a liberal economy, and a GDP to match. The US economy is so vast, so enormous, that just the 1.75% of it we spend on the military is more money than a lot of countries' entire economies. It really is that big.
Animats 11y ago
Fortune: "In February 2015, exports jumped 48%. So this February exports were up against a strong performance last year." The 25% number needs units. Is that in yuan, dollars, or TEU? The Port of Los Angeles publishes container statistics in TEU.[1] February isn't up yet, though. January was up 33% over last year. So this isn't showing up at the physical container level. Container statistics are useful because they're actual counts, not some kind of estimate. [1] https://www.portoflosangeles.org/Stats/stats_2016.html https://www.portoflosangeles.org/Stats/stats_2016.html
base 11y ago
Link Bait title. They didn't plunge 25% in February. This is a 25% plunge from the same time last year.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  When did the new meme become calling everything link bait? These metrics are measured year over year, so there's nothing remotely misleading about it.
- spangry 11y ago
  Link bait or not, it's objectively grim news. Chinese February trade data shows exports -25.4% yoy (vs. -14.5% market expectation), and imports down -13.8% yoy (vs. -12% market expectation). Market expectations factor in seasonality. So lower than expected overseas demand for Chinese exports, and simultaneously lower than expected Chinese domestic consumption. It's a double-whammy negative for Chinese economic production... Here's some analysis from HSBC covering both Jan & Feb (so figures are different): Exports for January-February period declined by 17.9% y-o-y, the lowest since 2012. Exports to all major markets saw broad-based weaknesses, with shipments to ASEAN countries contracting the most. Unfavourable base effects and possible seasonal reasons aside, weak external demand is still the main reason for today’s export slump. Imports remained in deep contraction in Jan-Feb despite the recent stabilisation in commodity prices, and this mostly reflected sluggish domestic demand... ...Overall, YTD trade data pointed to an increasingly challenging demand environment for China’s exports, which will likely put further pressure on domestic production. With risks to growth on the downside, and little support from external demand, a more decisive stimulus package targeted at lifting domestic demand and countering deflation is warranted.
antoniuschan99 11y ago
I was in Hong Kong on Lunar week. There was a lot of Chinese (Mandarin) speaking people during that time. It was very crowded!
stuaxo 11y ago
Hrm, austerity everywhere, wages down .. unsurprising ?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
RP_Joe 11y ago
"Customs figures showed exports fell to $126.1bn (£88.5bn) last month. That was down 25.4% from a year earlier and worse than an expected fall of about 15%. " But if you are measuring this in USD, and the deprecated yuan means more volume for less dollars.

115 points by mgdo 11y ago

Sounds scary but: """ According to Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, the severe fall in exports largely reflected changes in the timing of the Lunar Year in China this year. "In 2015, the holiday fell unusually late which meant that more of the pre-holiday rush to meet orders and less of the post holiday disruptions took place in February, causing exports to jump 48.9 percent year-on-year," he said. """

sharetea 11y ago
some other views: ""China will face a more challenging situation in trade this year than 2015. Both imports and exports in February fell more than our expectations." ""China's exports declined the most since May 2009, suggesting that the overly strong CNY exchange rate has become an obstacle for the external sector" ""February's trade data is really poor and that will exert depreciation pressure on the yuan." http://news.forexlive.com/!/china-export-collapse-in-january-and-february-analyst-responses-20160308 http://news.forexlive.com/!/china-export-collapse-in-january...
electic 11y ago
If anyone is interested the Shanghai Containerized Shipping Index is a great source to monitor exports.[1] [1] http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp
- rrggrr 11y ago
  The overall trend is down, consistent with the tenor of the OP article, and consistent with most of the economic news coming out of China.
- nutmeg 11y ago
  I am not familiar with any of this, but could a lower SCSI be caused by more shipping supply being available as opposed to fewer containers being shipped? Is there an index that tracks the number of containers shipped?
  - electic 11y ago
    These are the number of individual containers exported from a port. Has nothing to do with capacity, ships, etc.
jordanb 11y ago
One holiday puts exports down double digits for two months in a row eh? Must be one crazy party.
- fatjokes 11y ago
  It's the largest mass human migration on earth, and it happens annually.
  - discordance 11y ago
    There's a good documentary that covers this migration - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film)
- jzwinck 11y ago
  It is indeed. So crazy in fact that I couldn't get a hotel room in a major city with an international airport even three days after the holiday. In New Zealand.
  - toomanybeersies 11y ago
    Hell, it's so big that they had a big parade in Wellington for it.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I believe many workers will travel home to celebrate the holiday which must be hell compared to Thanksgiving air travel.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wheat74 11y ago
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but if it fell by 25% and the prediction was it falling by 15%, do they mean to imply those who made that month's prediction weren't aware of the particulars of Lunar New Year?
- spangry 11y ago
  Not a dumb question at all. Markets often behave irrationally, but they aren't that stupid. Market expectations (-14.5% export growth) definitely factor in seasonality. So it's very bad news. To make matters worse, import growth (-13.8%) was also lower than market expectations (-12%). As mentioned below, this suggests contracting overseas demand for Chinese exports AND contracting domestic consumption. Which adds up to lower than expected Chinese economic production. We'll probably see another Chinese stimulus package soon. Hopefully they manage to deploy it without exacerbating the capital mis-allocation and higher private debt that the previous one caused (mostly poured into residential real-estate construction and speculation).
SixSigma 11y ago
But if you couple that with "China to cut 1.8m jobs in coal and steel sectors" [1] it does make one take notice [1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/china-to-cut-jobs-in-coal-and-steel-sectors http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/china-to-cut...
josefresco 11y ago
Pretty much this - Nothing happens in China during the new year celebration. We've had recent contact with Chinese companies who all warned us that there would be no progress until after the holiday.
sharetea 11y ago
other evidences of economic activity collapse from China - China Layoffs: 5-6 Million State Jobs, 1.8 Million in Coal, Steel http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/china-layoffs-5-6-million-jobs/2016/03/02/id/716996/ http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/china-layoffs-5-6-million-job... - Foreign Funds Exit China Bond Market as Risks Escalate http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/global-funds-bolt-out-as-china-opens-door-to-yuan-bond-market http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/global-fun... - Hong Kong residential home sales plunged 70 per cent in February from a year earlier to a 25-year low http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/hong-kong-residential-sales-plunge-70-per-cent-20160307-gnc8fw http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/hong-kong-residen... - Zoomlion, the country’s leading construction machinery and sanitation equipment maker, announced a 90% net profit drop in 2015 http://fortune.com/2016/02/10/china-housing-market-mortgage-down-payment/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/10/china-housing-market-mortgage-... - Twice As Many Expatriates Leaving China Than Arriving http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/02/09/twice-as-many-expatriates-leaving-china-than-arriving-moving-company-says/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/02/09/twice-as-many-... - Manufacturers (Panasonic, Samsung, Foxconn) step up search for low cost alternative to China http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1863709/manufacturers-step-search-low-cost-alternative-china http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1863709/manuf... - Phantom Goods Disguise Billions in China Illicit Money Outflows http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-china-capital-b24a681e-e5eb-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f-20160309-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-china-capital-...
maw 11y ago
Yeah, fine, but that's no reason to not act irrational and panicky!
pkaye 11y ago
So this was expected because the holidays are preplanned and the drop is in line with the predictions?

gruez 11y ago

Title is misleading. From the second line of article: Exports dropped sharply by 25.4% from a year earlier I'm not sure about anyone else, but "exports plunge 25% in February" makes me think that it plunged 25% from January to February.

rahimnathwani 11y ago
It's common (in the economics/financial press) to refer to year-on-year changes in this way. This article is in the mainstream press, though, so perhaps they should have spelled it out.

wrong_variable 11y ago

HN LOVES the idea of bad things happening. As someone who's clients are all Chinese - there is not a better time to be in the Chinese market. China is quickly translating into a service powerhouse, I wouldn't be surprised if china will stop needing wallstreet to finance itself within the next 5 years. If you are in the SaaS business - china is where you need to be to make bank. Chinese millennials are rich, optimistic and are amazingly good adopters of technology. The chinese software market is also extremely young - unlike the saturated western ones. So even building simple service-automation/web-service will make you millions. Its almost laughable to me these days that an amazing company like netflix can only charge 5 dollars in america while in china people are spending insane amount of money online for really simple services.

jonknee 11y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if china will stop needing wallstreet to finance itself within the next 5 years. China doesn't currently need Wall Street, they have their own powerful central bank and tons of domestically held debt thanks to their very high export surplus and savings rate.
partiallypro 11y ago
No one is saying you can't make money in China anymore, only that the data coming out of China is really bad considering their huge growth over the past 20 years. They have a growth target between 6.5% and 7%, in the U.S. we would kill for that...but in China that is very much subpar.
- dragonbonheur 11y ago
  US citizens getting worried about China's finances and growth are akin to peasants getting worried about the finances of noblemen. Right now the US Congress is seriously considering giving corporations a "tax forgiveness" to the tune of $400 billion. When US citizens are abroad, they have to pay US taxes even if they haven't set foot on US territory for years. That rule doesn't apply to corporations. Do you find that fair? The establishment media continually fools US citizens by giving them distractions such as: "China is crashing!!!" - "Chinese growth is going down!!!" - "Corruption in China rampant!!!" - "China preparing for WAR!!!" Easy distractions like these have only one purpose: to distract US citizens from noticing that they are being defrauded by everyone they put in charge to run their country. It's as simple as that.

Mikeb85 11y ago

Not too long ago I pointed out an increase in anti-China propaganda. Seems this definitely is the case. A 25% drop from a 50% increase the year before (due to what is probably one of, if not the biggest holidays in the world) is still an increase from 2 years prior. Anyhow, this is just funny timing things. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/exports http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/exports If you set the chart to 10 years, you'll notice it's more or less in line with the average. If there is a slowdown (hard to tell), it's fairly mild, and would be more or less consistent with worldwide demand. It's just very dramatic for one month because of the holiday. In a year, I have no doubt that, contrary to what some observers are claiming, China will be alive and well.

contingencies 11y ago
Yes, that's what it looks like from here on the ground.
bsdpython 11y ago
It probably has little to do with anti-China propaganda. Financial news has always reported junk like this with clickbait headlines and a few cherry picked numbers to make a story from nothing.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

a3n 11y ago

It'd be cool if the US and other involved countries weren't so wary of China militarily. If we didn't have to counter their military, that could free up money to buy more of their exports. It seems kind of silly to threaten, however obliquely, your customers.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Different orders of magnitude. We spend approximately $600 million every year on countering all conventional military threats, all over the world. China exports around $2T worth of goods every year. China dropping the ball militarily would not affect our priorities at all.
- ojbyrne 11y ago
  I think you meant $600 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
- samcheng 11y ago
  Sorry, but your figure is wrong. The annual US Military budget is about $600 Billion, not $600 million. That's 3.5% of US GDP and a non-trivial amount; it's more than the entirety of US trade with China (imports in 2015 were $481 billion). It's half of US Government discretionary spending. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending-united-states/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi... https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I made a typo about the figure, sorry about that. People throw around these facts, comparing them to one another, without really understanding the scales involved. Half of discretionary government spending should be on the military. Sure, other countries that rely on bigger nations for their defense can get away with much smaller defense budgets, but a powerful hegemonic nation whose stability the entire world relies on needs a dominant military, and those aren't cheap. The primary role of a state that is serving its people and not the other way around is foreign policy and defense. What kept the Roman Empire alive for so many centuries was that other nations simply feared to openly challenge it militarily. Even banding together, they could not hope to withstand Roman legions. You made another comparison, that military spending is larger than the whole of China's trade with the US. That's irrelevant, it only means that the US is in a completely different league economically than China. Government spending is ultimately limited by its nation's economy. A command economy can spend more on things relative to the nation's GDP, but that limits the potential for the command economy to grow. This undeniable fact has driven China's domestic policy for decades. China has to modernize into a more liberal economy, otherwise it won't be able to survive. But it hasn't quite done that yet. The US, on the other hand, has had for its entire run a liberal economy, and a GDP to match. The US economy is so vast, so enormous, that just the 1.75% of it we spend on the military is more money than a lot of countries' entire economies. It really is that big.

Animats 11y ago

Fortune: "In February 2015, exports jumped 48%. So this February exports were up against a strong performance last year." The 25% number needs units. Is that in yuan, dollars, or TEU? The Port of Los Angeles publishes container statistics in TEU.[1] February isn't up yet, though. January was up 33% over last year. So this isn't showing up at the physical container level. Container statistics are useful because they're actual counts, not some kind of estimate. [1] https://www.portoflosangeles.org/Stats/stats_2016.html https://www.portoflosangeles.org/Stats/stats_2016.html

base 11y ago

Link Bait title. They didn't plunge 25% in February. This is a 25% plunge from the same time last year.

forgetsusername 11y ago
When did the new meme become calling everything link bait? These metrics are measured year over year, so there's nothing remotely misleading about it.
spangry 11y ago
Link bait or not, it's objectively grim news. Chinese February trade data shows exports -25.4% yoy (vs. -14.5% market expectation), and imports down -13.8% yoy (vs. -12% market expectation). Market expectations factor in seasonality. So lower than expected overseas demand for Chinese exports, and simultaneously lower than expected Chinese domestic consumption. It's a double-whammy negative for Chinese economic production... Here's some analysis from HSBC covering both Jan & Feb (so figures are different): Exports for January-February period declined by 17.9% y-o-y, the lowest since 2012. Exports to all major markets saw broad-based weaknesses, with shipments to ASEAN countries contracting the most. Unfavourable base effects and possible seasonal reasons aside, weak external demand is still the main reason for today’s export slump. Imports remained in deep contraction in Jan-Feb despite the recent stabilisation in commodity prices, and this mostly reflected sluggish domestic demand... ...Overall, YTD trade data pointed to an increasingly challenging demand environment for China’s exports, which will likely put further pressure on domestic production. With risks to growth on the downside, and little support from external demand, a more decisive stimulus package targeted at lifting domestic demand and countering deflation is warranted.

antoniuschan99 11y ago

I was in Hong Kong on Lunar week. There was a lot of Chinese (Mandarin) speaking people during that time. It was very crowded!

stuaxo 11y ago

Hrm, austerity everywhere, wages down .. unsurprising ?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

RP_Joe 11y ago

"Customs figures showed exports fell to $126.1bn (£88.5bn) last month. That was down 25.4% from a year earlier and worse than an expected fall of about 15%. " But if you are measuring this in USD, and the deprecated yuan means more volume for less dollars.