BEIJING — China on Wednesday reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, as producers braced for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the production powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets.

Beijing’s resilience to renewed tariff tensions since President Donald J. Trump returned to the White House last January has emboldened Chinese firms to shift their focus to Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset US duties.

With Beijing looking to exports to counteract a prolonged property slump and sluggish domestic demand, the record-shattering surplus risks further unsettling economies concerned about China’s trade practices and overcapacity, as well as their overreliance on key Chinese products.

The manufacturing powerhouse’s full-year trade surplus came in at $1.189 trillion — a figure on par with the gross domestic product of a top 20 economy globally like Saudi Arabia — customs data showed on Wednesday, having broken the trillion-dollar ceiling for the first time in November.

“The momentum for global trade growth looks to be insufficient, and the external environment for China’s foreign trade development remains severe and complex,” Wang Jun, a vice-minister at China’s customs administration, said at a press briefing on Wednesday.

However, “with more diversified trading partners, (China’s) ability to withstand risks has been significantly enhanced,” Mr. Wang said, adding that “the fundamentals for China’s foreign trade remains solid.”

Outbound shipments from the world’s second-biggest economy grew 6.6% in value terms year-on-year in December, compared with a 5.9% increase in November. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 3% increase.

Imports were up 5.7%, after a 1.9% bump the month earlier and also beat a forecast for a 0.9% uptick.

“Strong export growth helps to mitigate the weak domestic demand,” said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

“Combined with the booming stock market and stable US-China relations, the government is likely to keep the macro policy stance unchanged at least in Q1.”

EXPORTS UP AS CHINA SET TO GAIN MORE GLOBAL SHARE
China’s yuan held steady following the upbeat data even as equity investors welcomed the forecast-beating numbers. The benchmark Shanghai Composite index and blue-chip CSI300 both rose more than 1% in morning deals.

The Asian economic juggernaut’s monthly trade surpluses exceeded $100 billion seven times last year, partially underpinned by a weakened yuan, up from just once in 2024, underscoring that Mr. Trump’s actions have barely dented China’s broader trade with the wider world even if he has curbed US-bound shipments.

Exports to the US slumped 20% in dollar terms in 2025, while imports from the world’s top economy were down 14.6%. Chinese factories managed to make inroads in other markets, with exports to Africa jumping 25.8% and those to the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations up 13.4%. European Union (EU)-bound shipments grew 8.4%.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday said he thinks China can open its markets to American goods, after threatening a day earlier to slap a 25% tariff on countries that trade with Iran, risking reopening old wounds with Beijing, Tehran’s biggest trading partner.

Economists expect China to continue gaining global market share this year, helped by Chinese firms setting up overseas production hubs that provide lower-tariff access to the United States and the EU, as well as by strong demand for lower-grade chips and other electronics.

A flagship of Beijing’s global industrial ambitions, China’s auto industry saw overall exports jump 19.4% to 5.79 million vehicles last year, with pure electric vehicle shipments up 48.8%. China would likely remain the world’s top auto exporter for a third year after first superseding Japan in 2023.

Beijing, however, has shown signs of recognizing it must moderate its industrial exports if it is to sustain its success, and the leadership has been increasingly cognizant and vocal about imbalances in China’s economy and the image problem outsized exports are causing.

After November’s trillion-dollar surplus data, Chinese Premier Li Qiang was quoted last week on national television as calling for “proactively expanding imports and promoting the balanced development of imports and exports.”

The country also scrapped subsidy-like export tax rebates for its solar industry, a longstanding point of friction with EU states.

Lawmakers last month passed revisions to the Foreign Trade Law after two, rather than the usual three readings, in a signal to members of a major trans-Pacific trade pact that China is prepared to shift from industrial subsidies and towards freer, more open trade.

Despite the year-long truce on tariffs that Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck in late October, US duties of 47.5% on Chinese goods are well above the roughly 35% level analysts say enables Chinese firms to export to the US at a profit. — Reuters

BRUSSELS — The planet experienced its third-warmest year on record in 2025, and average temperatures have exceeded 1.5°C of global warming over three years, the longest period since records began, European Union (EU) scientists said on Wednesday.

The data from the EU’s European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) found that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began — with 2025 marginally cooler than 2023, by just 0.01°C.

Britain’s national weather service, the UK Met Office, confirmed its own data ranked 2025 as the third warmest in records going back to 1850. The World Meteorological Organization will publish its temperature figures later on Wednesday.

The hottest year on record was 2024.

EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS
ECMWF said the planet also just had its first three-year period in which the average global temperature was 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era — the limit beyond which scientists expect global warming will unleash severe impacts, some of them irreversible.

“1.5°C is not a cliff edge. However, we know that every fraction of a degree matters, particularly for worsening extreme weather events,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.

Governments pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to avoid exceeding 1.5°C of global warming, measured as a decades-long average temperature compared with the pre-industrial era.

But their failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that level could now be breached before 2030 — a decade earlier than had been predicted when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, ECMWF said.

“We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”

POLITICAL PUSHBACK
Currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4°C above the pre-industrial era, ECMWF said. Measured on a short-term basis, the world already breached 1.5°C in 2024.

Exceeding the long-term 1.5°C limit — even if only temporarily — would lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including hotter and longer heatwaves, and more powerful storms and floods.

In 2025, wildfires in Europe produced the highest total emissions on record, while scientific studies confirmed specific weather events were made worse by climate change — including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan which killed more than 1,000 people in floods.

Despite these worsening impacts, climate science is facing increased political pushback. US President Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change “the greatest con job,” last week withdrew from dozens of United Nations entities including the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere. — Reuters

HANOI — Vietnam will introduce an absolute excise tax on cigarettes starting in 2027, with rates increasing incrementally to 10,000 dong ($0.38, $1 = 26,294 dong) per pack by 2031 as part of a campaign to curb smoking, state media reported late on Tuesday.

The amended Special Consumption Tax law, passed last year, will adopt a mixed tax regime starting from 2027, combining the existing 75% base rate with an absolute levy starting at 2,000 dong per pack and rising over the following four years.

“The tax on tobacco for the 2012-2025 period is very low and had no impact on reducing consumption, while Vietnam’s per capita income has steadily increased every year,” Phan Thi Hai, deputy director of the Tobacco Harm Prevention Fund, was quoted as saying by Suc Khoe Doi Song, the official newspaper of the health ministry.

Vietnam has raised tobacco taxes twice since 2013, but officials say the increases have had little impact on smoking.

The health ministry reported that the current tax burden on tobacco represents only 36.8% of retail prices, well below the 70-75% level recommended by the World Health Organization, and also much lower than the rates seen in neighboring ASEAN countries, including Thailand at 78.6% and Singapore at 67.1%.

The health ministry on Tuesday proposed further changes to the Tobacco Harm Prevention Law, including the expansion of smoke-free areas, the tightening of retail restrictions, the enlarging of health warnings to cover 85% of cigarette packets, and imposing advertising and marketing bans to restrict youth access.

Vietnam health officials estimate that approximately 100,000 deaths occur annually as a direct or indirect result of smoking.

The health ministry last year said Vietnam had more than 15 million smokers in 2024, ranking it among the world’s top tobacco-consuming countries.

The ministry warned that the affordability of cigarettes remained a significant barrier to reducing tobacco use, particularly among men. — Reuters