As President Trump’s tariffs close off the U.S. market, Chinese goods are flooding countries from Southeast Asia to Europe to Latin America.
Two decades ago, China shocked the United States with its ability to make and ship things fast and inexpensively on a scale never before seen. The resulting surge of exports reshaped America’s economy and its politics.
Today, a new China shock is cascading across the globe from Indonesia to Germany to Brazil.
As President Trump’s tariffs start to shut China out of the United States, its biggest market, Chinese factories are sending their toys, cars and shoes to other countries at a pace that is reshaping economies and geopolitics.
This year so far, China’s trade surplus with the world is nearly $500 billion — a more than 40 percent increase from the same period last year.
As the world’s two superpowers duke it out over trade, the rest of the world is now bracing for an even bigger China shock.
“China has loads of things that it needs to export, and whether or not the U.S. puts tariffs on China, it’s pretty much impossible to stop the shifts in flows,” said Leah Fahy, a China economist at Capital Economics.