Asian Exporters Seeing Stronger Growth To US Than China

The robust US economy is benefiting the world’s exporters especially those countries where shipments to the US are a large share of their total. Of the eleven countries in our sample that have over 15% of their exports going to the US only two saw a contraction in the April 3-month average of the annual rate. In contrast those reliant on China are not doing as well, China could be diversifying its trade base.

• The charts below shows not only the geographical influence on trade trends but the importance of diversification, particularly to the world’s largest economies. Taiwan and Korea are good examples.

Source: MNI - Market News/Refinitiv

* The blue bars are the top 5 exporters to the US as a share of their 2023 exports, the pink ones are top 5 to China. eg. Mexico is the largest exporter to the US as a share of 2023 Mexico's exports and April grew 7.5% y/y 3m ma.

• Understandably fellow NAFTA countries Mexico and Canada are the most reliant on trade with the US accounting for 83% and 77% of 2023 exports and 6.8% and 20.5% of 2023 GDP respectively. Both have seen an improvement in shipment growth to the US this year.
• The US is also important for the Asian region, 20% of Japan’s exports went there in 2023 and 18% of Korea’s, India’s and Taiwan’s. They all saw double-digit growth in shipments to the US in April with Taiwan particularly strong at over 72% y/y 3-month average as it benefits from the US’ shift away from Chinese microchips. The only countries in the region seeing negative export growth to the US are China itself, Singapore and Hong Kong.
• In terms of the share of total exports, Australia, NZ, Indonesia and Taiwan are the largest shippers to China, but all ex Taiwan have small shares to the US. 36% of Australia’s exports went to China last year worth 7.8% of Australian GDP and in April they shrank 6.9% y/y 3-month ma as volumes and prices were both softer. China’s share for NZ and Indonesia is around 26% and both those countries are seeing exports to that destination contract. Taiwan’s remain slightly positive.