@Brad_Setser: China's premier says China wan...

China's premier says China wants to be a market for the world, not just a source of supply.

He might want to get get started.

China exported over 7m passenger cars in 2025, and the pace of growth accelerated at the end of the year

1/ many

Passenger car imports are down to half a million, and falling fast ... no market for the world there

2/

As an aside the pace of China's (N)EV exports doubled over the course of 2025 -- huge, huge growth ... China is still a source of global supply there, not a source of global demand

3/

For every dollar of imports of manufactured goods, China now exports $2.3 ... the unbalanced nature of auto trade is typical

4/

Net out processing imports and the ratio is over 4 -- exports of manufacturers net of processing are over 13% of GDP, imports net of processing are under 3% of GDP

5/

There has been very little growth in China's imports of manufactures in dollar terms over the last 12ys (the growth actually goes away if you take out chip imports)

6/

And over the last 6 years imports of manufactures are up $200b while exports are up $1.24 trillion -- a ratio of 6 to 1

7/

Falling export prices have held down China's dollar exports v the GDP of its trading partners, but China's global surplus in manufactures remains an unprecedented 2 pp of world GDP

8/

Martin Wolf has a point!

9/9

ft.com/content/cd68b3…