China’s surplus tops $1 trillion as the gap narrows
Ten months of customs data put the surplus at $1.04 trillion, the second straight year above the mark, while October shows imports growing faster than exports — the number Brussels and Washington will argue over in Shenzhen.
China’s goods surplus passed $1.04 trillion in the first ten months of 2026, customs data released on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, showed — the second consecutive year above the threshold and, at the current pace, enough to overtake 2025’s record of $1.2 trillion (AP).
The October figures point the other way. Exports rose 35.2% from a year earlier to $412.3 billion and imports rose 41.6% to $307.1 billion, both above the Reuters consensus of 33.5% and 32%, respectively (Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC)). Imports outran exports by more than six percentage points, with import growth accelerating from 31% in September while export growth slowed from 36.3%, and the monthly surplus fell to $105.3 billion from $133.5 billion in September — the smallest since April.
The gap closed from the import side
The categories carrying the import bill are the tell. China Customs lists high-tech equipment, copper, liquefied natural gas, crude and coal among the drivers behind the fastest import growth since May 2021 (Associated Press (AP)). Those are inputs before they are consumption: copper and gas for factories, machinery and components for the lines that assemble the goods counted on the export side of the same ledger.
That distinction matters to the argument now running through Brussels and Washington. A surplus that narrows because a country is buying more is a different object from one that narrows because it is selling less, and the European Union has built its case on exactly this asymmetry: it wants Beijing to rebalance toward household demand and to open its own market wider, rather than to keep converting industrial capacity into shipments. An import surge of this size gives the European Union its best number in years, even as the ten-month total hands it a record.
A narrowing surplus built on larger imports is a weaker target for tariffs than one built on lost exports.
A truce with a date on it
The bilateral balance carries the political weight. China Customs data show exports to the United States rose 32.9% and imports from the United States 35%, leaving a surplus of $32.7 billion with the partner that has organized its trade policy around that figure. The truce between Washington and Beijing has been extended by two months, and Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are due to meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, with the Chinese surplus as the item both delegations have already written speeches about.
Neither side arrives with a clean story. Beijing can point to October’s import growth outrunning export growth, after the reverse in September, and describe the gap as closing on its own. Washington can point to a second consecutive year above a trillion dollars and describe the gap as structural. Both readings come from the same release.
What the October data does settle is narrower than either capital would like. Export growth is still running above a third year on year, and the monthly surplus is still above $100 billion. The import surge that trimmed the gap is powered by the same industrial system that produces the exports, so the two lines move together.
At the current pace, China is likely to cross the trillion-dollar mark again in December, whatever happens in Shenzhen. What the meeting can change is the label attached to it — evidence of rebalancing, or evidence that rebalancing is not happening — and that label will be chosen by whichever government needs it first, from the same customs release published on Tuesday morning.