To: Julius Wong who wrote (152466 ) 1/13/2020 9:49:02 PM From: TobagoJack Respond to of 217739 trade war scoring ...bloomberg.com China’s Trade With U.S. Fell in 2019, Global Surplus Widened China’s total exports expanded in 2019 on stronger global demand, and trade with the U.S. dropped almost 11% as the trade war hit relations between the two biggest economies. Exports increased 5% in yuan terms in 2019 from a year earlier, while imports rose 1.6%, the customs administration said Tuesday. That widened the trade surplus by 25.4% to 2.92 trillion yuan ($424.6 billion) for the year.The European Union continued to be China’s largest trading partner, and the U.S. dropped to third place behind ASEAN. Dollar trade values are set to be announced later Tuesday Key InsightsChinese Vice Premier Liu He is due to sign the first phase of the trade deal with the U.S. in Washington on Jan. 15. The truce has calmed fears of an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies, at least temporarily, at a time when investors are nervous over conflict in the Middle East and volatile oil prices.The government is scheduled to announce 2019 gross domestic product growth on Friday. The head of the statistics bureau gave an indication of the results over the weekend, when he said the country would reach its target of economic growth of 6% to 6.5%.China’s central bank trimmed a key interest rate this month, to keep domestic liquidity conditions relatively supportive amid a broader government drive to shore up the private sector, and ahead of the expected cash crunch during upcoming holidays. While pork prices continued rising, overall consumer inflation steadied in December and left room for monetary easing to cement a recent stabilization in economic growth.“We agree that the trade war may be behind us, at least for 2020. That said, China’s export slowdown in 2019 was not very different from the rest of world, suggesting the deceleration is mainly due to the slowing global economy instead of trade war,” Macquarie Group Ltd’s Larry Hu wrote in a note last week. Thus, those easing tensions “will not be a big boost to exports and we expect exports to grow 0% in 2020.”— With assistance by Miao Han, and Tomoko Sato