No rest for the wicked this weekend as we have big news from China.
Just a week after downgrading their GDP projections to as low as 6.5% (a 13% reduction from 7.5%), China now CLAIMS Exports in February jumped 48.3% while Imports fell 20.5%. The change isn't reflected on this chart, which shows the 3.3% fall in January exports but it looks like we're back to the days of Fake Chinese Data Reports – not that those days were ever really gone in the first place.
Amazingly, this incredible turnaroun in imports comes just one day after Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said:
"The domestic and foreign trade environments this year have not improved markedly. To fulfill the foreign trade growth target, efforts should be made to implement existing policies. To achieve this goal will be an uphill battle and great efforts must be made.""
So gold stars to his entire staff for completely fixing the problem within 24 hours of his speech! Gao had stressed that a multi-pronged strategy must be adopted: the country should strengthen support for businesses in the process of industrial upgrading, produce higher-value products, focus on innovation-driven competitiveness and encourage the development of new export models like e-commerce. And then they did it all in just one day!
Meanwhile, imports slumped 20.5% from a year earlier in February, surpassing the 19.9% fall in January and exceeding market expectations of a 10% decrease. The February slide was the fourth consecutive month of lower year-over-year imports. The import decline was partly due to the sharp fall in prices for key commodities such as oil and metals. Crude-oil imports fell 46% in value but were up 11% in volume. Iron-ore imports showed a similar trend, losing 39% in value but gaining 11% in volume. That's key for our CLF investment as iron-ore volume is picking up – a hopeful sign (if we can believe the numbers).
IN PROGRESS
