Chinese Q1 2024 Export Data Offers No Smoking Gun for Over-capacity Debate
ZEITGEIST SERIES BRIEFING #20
The first full set of Chinese trade data for Q1 2024 was released last week. Much commentary linked this release to the narrative gaining traction this year that over-capacity in China’s manufacturing industry is leading to a flood of goods on to world markets. Planks of the economic and competitive logic at the core of the critique of the harm done by Chinese non-market practices are hard to reconcile with last week’s Chinese export data. Future data releases may, of course, be kinder to that critique, but for now the narrative is getting too far ahead of the evidence.
