goods-trade.jpg (Photo : www.ms-capitalpartners.com)
China's whole-year goods trade in 2013 is expected to reach over U.S. $4.14 trillion, positioning the country as the world's top trader for the first time when the actual figures are out next week.
Analysts said the current figures show that China is poised to overtake the United States as the world's biggest trader even as the December figure has yet to be released. In the first 11 months of 2013, China's goods trade reached up to 3.77 trillion U.S. dollars based on the data released by the General Administration of Customs.
And even if the December value will not change from the same period of last year, which is very unlikely considering that December is usually a peak season for China's exports and imports, the 2013 goods trade will still hit 4.14 trillion U.S. dollars.
In the United States, goods trade in the January-October period registered U.S. $3.26 trillion based on the figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Census. For the U.S. to keep its title as the world's top trader, it will have to accumulate trade value of U.S. $880 billion in November and December, which is unlikely to be achieved considering that U.S. goods trade did not hit above 15 percent growth in the last two months of previous years.
Unless there was a late and big fluctuation, China's overall goods trade had overtaken the United States last year, said Jia Huaiquin of the country's Statistical Society for Foreign Economic Relations and Trade.
In fact, Shen Danyang, spokesman at the Commerce Ministry, announced last September that China was in a position to replace the United States as the world's largest trader for 2013.
The actual numbers will be announced by China next week while the United States is set to announce its figure next month.
In 2012, the United States kept its title as the world's biggest goods trader by earning US$15 billion more than China's total goods trade.
