China’s trade print comes in above expectations in May, investment growth likely to slow down in future

On Thursday, China’s headline trade figures were released that showed the trade print coming in higher than consensus expectations for the month of May. In USD terms, the nation’s exports rose 8.7 percent year-on-year, whereas the imports grew 14.8 percent year-on-year.

Even if the headline figures seem to be consistent with the recent trade data of other nations, such as South Korea, there appear to be some inconsistency between China’s trade figures and recent weakness in manufacturing PMIs.

After the seasonal adjustment, the trend growth of exports shows some sort of stability, but there emerged an evident slowing momentum imports, which possibly indicates towards a slowdown in China’s investment growth along the road, noted Commerzbank in a research report.