China-US trade

China's trade with the US in the first half of the year was outstanding as growth in dollar terms reported was the "highest" among China's major trade partners even if relations between the world's two largest economies remain frayed.

Bilateral trade grew 45.7 percent year-on-year in the first six months of 2021, higher than China's trade growth with ASEAN (38.2 percent) and the EU (37 percent), statistics of the General Administration of Customs (GAC) showed on Tuesday.

Specifically, China's exports to the US surged 42.6 percent in dollar terms with demand for laptops, smartphones, home appliances and clothes remaining robust, according to Chinese customs.

Agricultural imports from the US soared 120.8 percent in yuan terms in the same period, as China remains committed to buying agricultural products from the US, according to the phase one trade deal.

"Based on the bilateral trade performance in the first half of the year, the complementarity of China-US trade has become more prominent in front of hardships and disaster," Gao Lingyun, a trade expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

He stressed such results were achieved despite the coronavirus pandemic and tariffs imposed on some key foreign trade goods, which further proves that "it is useless to reduce a trade deficit by the means of imposing tariffs."

Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council, in June published an article on Politico titled "US-China trade dispute harms Americans." He cited Moody's Analytics and said that American companies shouldered more than 90 percent of the cost of US tariffs on Chinese goods.

Against the backdrop of the US' domestic political rivalry, experts said the "political coldness but economic heat" situation with China will continue. Recently, the Biden administration put more Chinese companies on the US entity list, citing baseless claims of "forced labor."

"It contradicts the principle of win-win cooperation between China and the US," Gao pointed out, urging the US government to create more favorable conditions for its exports to China.

As the phase one trade deal will be due by the end of the year, Gao estimated that China's imports from the US will be faster than currently but exports may slow down due to the recovery of US production considering its vaccination speed and control of the virus.

In addition to the robust trade with the US, China also saw a 62.7 percent trade growth with India in the first half of the year and 35 percent growth with Australia, both in dollar terms.

It is notable that China's iron ore imports, one of the major products of China-Australia trade, fell for a third straight month in June. China bought 89.42 million tons of iron ore from different countries in the month, down from the 89.79 million tons of imports in May, according to the GAC.