China’s export machine rumbled back last month after sputtering in October, a relief for an economy that’s become more one-dimensional under the thumb of an tyrant.

Shipments abroad grew nearly 6% in November, Beijing’s customs agency said Monday. Recall that export growth abruptly turned negative in October, a bad omen given the Party’s ongoing struggle to revive domestic demand.

Import growth for November was around 2%. At $112 billion, the one-month surplus was the third-biggest on record.

More importantly, China’s YTD surplus exceeded $1 trillion, a milestone and a testament to the notion that although Donald Trump’s tariffs might’ve succeeded in curbing shipments to the US, putting the genie back in the lantern a quarter century on from China’s WTO accession simply won’t be possible.

There’s the chart, and it obviously presages more handwringing in Western capitals where the political center’s cracking (or already collapsed) in part due to voter disaffection with the accumulated imbalances of hyper-globalization.

Through November, the breakdown shows exports worth $3.4 trillion and imports worth $2.3 trillion. There’s still one month to go in 2025, so what’s already a $1.1 trillion surplus will be even larger by the time the books close on the full year.

Shipments to the US dropped nearly 30% in November as illustrated by the red-shaded area in the figure below.

Although exports to Southeast Asian rose at the slowest pace in nine months, shipments to Europe grew 15%, the most in more than three years.

Given that latter statistic, you can expect more friction with the EU, and probably more attempts at protectionism, none of which will prove especially effective. Nor, by the way, will Trump achieve what he’s after with the tariffs assuming it’s possible to discern a definitive set of goals from his on-again, off-again trade war with Xi.

We tend to act as though every problem has a solution, but it doesn’t. The small problem of death’s a good example.

China’s dominance as a manufacturer of cheap and not-always low-quality goods is unchallenged and where it is, those locales can be transshipment destinations. Attempting to address this “problem” is a game of Whac-A-Mole.

In their coverage, The Wall Street Journal cited Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. By his estimates, China accounts for nearly 40% of what’s moving across oceans in shipping containers on a given day in volume terms.

As The New York Times reminded its readers in late October, “Many of the components in the things that are made around the world come from China,” and they weren’t just — or even primarily — referring to components that make headlines. The linked article mentions items like screws and glue. There are a million other such innocuous examples.

Take a given product, remove everything from it that originates from China — or might’ve originated from China — and there’s a very good chance that thing will fall apart or cease to exist altogether.

Anyway, China has its own problems and indeed overreliance on exports is a reflection of them. Lackluster domestic demand continues to plague the world’s second largest economy and that explains some of the overcapacity which in turn gets foisted on the rest of the world as cheap exports.

Noises out of the Politburo on Monday indicated the Party intends to redouble its efforts to bolster consumption in 2026. “We must build a strong domestic market,” a readout of the December meeting said.