China's export remains strong despite EU's EV tariff: EU Chamber president

China's export remains strong despite challenges such as the European Union's electric vehicle (EV) tariffs and broader global economic pressures, according to the head of the European Union (EU) Chamber of Commerce in China.

Jens Eskelund, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, shared his insights towards China's foreign trade in an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN), highlighting that the disruption of the current hotspot of EU's EV tariffs on China is not significant in the context of the country's overall foreign trade.

"Last year, EVs accounted for 1.8 percent of European import from China. And that's what to me is a little bit surprising. We spent so much energy talking about 1.8 percent where maybe we should look a little bit more of the 98.2 percent, where actually Chinese exports are doing very fine," said Eskelund.

In addition to Europe, China's export is gaining momentum in most of the regions with its large economic volume and great vitality.

"If you look at the first half of the year, Chinese exports to Europe in volume terms, the number of containers shipped, actually grew by 10 to 11 percent or so. With the exception of North America, we're actually seeing China taking markets share in all other markets in terms of its export. So, China is doing fantastically well," said Eskelund.

Looking to the future, Eskelund holds high expectations for China's export growth despite the threat of high tariffs and protectionism.

"Now, our expectation is that global growth in container volumes will grow around maybe 7 percent this year. And 6 percent of these 7 percent is due to growth out of China. So, growing 6-7 percent is twice as fast as global economic growth. I mean deglobalization, on-shoring, friend-shoring, near-shoring, we don't really see it in the figures. Maybe we see a fragmentation and we see sort of every grouping of trade patterns, but really, in this particular year 2024, we have seen a quite strong trade performance," said Eskelund.

The central parity rate of the Chinese currency renminbi, or the yuan, strengthened 95 pips to 6.8579 against the U.S. dollar Monday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.

In China's spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 2 percent from the central parity rate each trading day.

The central parity rate of the yuan against the U.S. dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day.