China’s exports rose 25.0% year over year in August, beating the 21.9% consensus estimate and accelerating from July’s 23.9% increase, according to customs data released September 8. Imports climbed 28.2%, broadly matching expectations and slightly exceeding July’s 27.6% growth, widening the monthly trade surplus to $119.1 billion from $112.5 billion. AI-related goods, higher export prices, consumer-goods restocking and Chinese manufacturers’ competitiveness supported the increase. Integrated-circuit exports surged 129.8%, exports of automatic data processing equipment and components rose 76.5%, and integrated-circuit prices were estimated to have increased 149.6% year over year. Consumer electronics exports rose 79.7%, while toy, footwear and home-appliance exports increased 15.3%, 11.4% and 10.8%, respectively. Exports to the United States rose 34.4% to $42.5 billion, while U.S. exports to China totaled $13.3 billion. Exports to South Korea accelerated to 49.5%, but growth to the European Union and ASEAN slowed to 6.8% and 30.4%, respectively. The first-eight-month trade surplus reached $805.5 billion, while separate reporting cited China’s overall 2025 surplus as nearly $1.2 trillion. The data intensified debate over the effect of U.S. tariffs. Investor Peter Schiff said China was the clear winner of President Donald Trump’s trade war, arguing that tariffs cut the U.S. merchandise deficit with China by a third to $73.9 billion in the first half of 2026 without materially improving the broader U.S. trade balance. The overall U.S. goods deficit widened to $118.8 billion in July, while capital-goods imports including computers, semiconductors and AI hardware rose 11.3% to $140.1 billion. Economists cautioned that seasonally adjusted import momentum weakened, indicating soft domestic demand, while non-AI capital-goods exports also slowed alongside weak production in parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. Washington is pressing G20 countries to reconsider trade ties with China, and Trump is considering an additional 7.5% tariff on Chinese goods as the two countries seek to preserve a fragile trade truce ahead of a planned meeting with President Xi Jinping later in September.