As US influence wanes, the Chinese trade surplus strangles manufacturing across the globe

Trump's wounding of the US economy offers Beijing an unparalleled opportunity - if it dials back its overbearing trade tactics

When the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, took to the podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week to lament how great economic powers" were dismantling the international order, it seemed clear that he was talking about the United States. He might have been talking about China as well.

Not a week earlier, Beijing had revealed that China's trade surplus ballooned by 20% in 2025, to $1.2tn. Despite Donald Trump's wall of tariffs that crashed Chinese sales to the US, its overall exports expanded more than 5%. Sales to the 11 countries in Asia's Asean bloc increased more than 13%. Exports to the European Union rose over 8%. Chinese imports, by contrast, were flat.