BEIJING, April 14 — Chinese exports soared more than 12 per cent last month, according to data Monday, beating expectations as businesses rushed to get ahead of swingeing tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on his so-called "Liberation Day”.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a fast-moving, high-stakes game of brinkmanship since Trump launched a global tariff assault that has particularly targeted Chinese imports.

Tit-for-tat exchanges have seen US levies imposed on China rise to 145 per cent, and Beijing setting a retaliatory 125 per cent toll on US imports.

Figures from the General Administration of Customs showed a 12.4 per cent jump in overseas shipments, more than double the 4.6 per cent predicted in a Bloomberg survey.

Imports during the same period fell 4.3 per cent, an improvement on the first two months of the year in a sign that domestic consumption was rebounding.

"At present, China’s exports are indeed facing a complex and severe external situation, but the sky will not fall down,” Lyu Daliang, a spokesman for the General Administration of Customs, told a news conference after the data was released.

Beijing also said Monday that the United States remained the largest single overseas destination for Chinese goods from January to March, amounting to US$115.6 billion (RM510 billion).

Last month, which saw a second round of US tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, the country’s exports to the United States increased by about nine per cent year-on-year, Beijing said.

China’s top leaders have set an ambitious annual growth target of around five per cent, vowing to make domestic demand its main economic driver.

But its fragile recovery faces fresh headwinds from Trump’s trade war.

The US side appeared to dial down the pressure on Friday, listing tariff exemptions for smartphones, laptops, semiconductors and other electronic products of which China is a major source.

Frontloading

Analysts attributed the March surge to a rush to export ahead of Trump’s April 2 "Liberation Day” tariffs on all trade partners that sent global markets tumbling.

"The strong export data reflect frontloading of trade before the US tariffs were announced,” Zhiwei Zhang, President and Chief Economist at Pinpoint Asset Management said in a note.

"China’s exports will likely weaken in coming months as the US tariffs skyrocket,” he added.

"The uncertainty of trade policies is extremely high,” Zhang said.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics, said in a note that "in anticipation of even higher duties, demand from US importers continued to hold up fairly well” in March.

"But shipments are set to drop back over the coming months and quarters,” he added.

"It could be years before Chinese exports regain current levels.”

And the world’s second-largest economy continues to struggle with sluggish consumption and a prolonged debt crisis in its property sector.

Beijing last year announced a string of aggressive measures to reignite growth, including cutting interest rates, cancelling restrictions on homebuying, hiking the debt ceiling for local governments and bolstering support for financial markets.

But after a blistering market rally last year fuelled by hopes for a long-awaited "bazooka stimulus”, optimism waned as authorities refrained from providing a specific figure for the bailout or fleshing out any of the pledges. — AFP