China’s manufacturing is booming despite Trump’s tariffs

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. President Trump retook the White House almost a year ago promising a manufacturing boom. He got one—in China.

Chinese industrial production broke records this year as its factories churned out more cars, machinery and chemicals than ever before. Despite the disruptions of tariffs, the country’s trade surplus in goods has set a record, as growing shipments to Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa offset the hit from Trump’s levies on direct sales to the U.S. Chinese companies that built their business around low trade barriers to sell into the U.S.

have adapted and in some cases are bouncing back. In May, Chinese-owned e-commerce giant Temu’s business model of serving up affordable household goods, beauty products and clothes to American consumers looked all but finished. In addition to the tariffs, new regulations ended a loophole that allowed the company to send small packages to the U.S.

tariff-free, punishing sales. Today, Temu is once again among the most downloaded apps in the U.S., and business is booming. The Chinese manufacturing juggernaut shows little sign of slowing.

China reported a goods trade surplus of more than $1 trillion for the year through November, while manufacturing output in the first 10 months of the year was up 7% compared with the same period in 2024. Strip out imports of energy, food and raw materials and China is on track this year to post a surplus in manufactured goods of around $2 trillion, a huge sum that is on a par with the annual national income of Russia or Italy. That is twice the surplus in manufactured goods that China reported at the end of Trump’s first term in early 2020.