Beijing and Oval Office get closer to each other unprecedentedly in trade terms

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in South Korea in October this year - leading to a series of announcements on closer trade ties. In return, China will start "the purchase of massive amounts of soybeans" and other farm products, according to the US President.

There were already questions about the sustainability of China’s export blitz with the USA before data released last week showed exports unexpectedly contracted by just over 1% year on year in October – the first downturn since February 2025. Beijing gathers confidence through its trade negotiations with Washington DC.

As US duties on Chinese imports spun higher and higher earlier this year, Derek Wang braced for major disruption, reports CNN.

With US orders ground to a halt, Wang, 36, who sells intelligent cookware out of southern China’s Guangdong province, looked elsewhere to fill the gap. After finding new buyers in Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and Cambodia, he learned what he describes as a key lesson: “Nothing is more important than the markets close to us.”

Stories like Wang’s have played out across China’s vast economy where businesses, large and small, scrambled to fill the void after temporary triple-digit duties – and the threat of their return – upended Chinese exports to the world’s wealthiest market. The result has been a coup for China’s trade juggernaut.

Instead of seeing exports falter on lost US business, the world’s largest manufacturer has driven them deeper into other markets around the world – building on the country’s global economic footprint and hedges companies made during Trump’s first trade war.

The resilience gave Beijing confidence in its months-long negotiations with the US, which came to a head in October when leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met and agreed to a truce that whittles new tariffs on Chinese goods down to 20%.

But the push also puts China on track to eclipse last year’s gaping nearly $1 trillion global trade surplus – a balance that’s irritated governments around the world and sparked Trump’s trade war in the first place.

There were already questions about the sustainability of China’s export blitz before data released last week showed exports unexpectedly contracted by just over 1% year on year in October – the first downturn since February.

Whether China can maintain its level of exports to the rest of the world – and expand back into the US market after the recent truce, is a consequential question for the world’s second-largest economy as it continues to struggle with lackluster demand from its own consumers, but doubles down on manufacturing as its economic cornerstone.