Mechanical and electrical foreign trade will return to low-speed growth

On February 14, Ningde Times, a Chinese new energy power battery company, and Ford, a century-old American car company, announced at the same time that the two parties will cooperate in the production of lithium iron phosphate batteries in a new power battery factory in Michigan, Estados UNIDOS, with an investment of up to 3.5 billion US dollars in the new factory. Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley said: "The batteries in the new factory will be among the cheapest to produce, which will lower the price of electric vehicles and make automakers more profitable."

This is another great achievement of China's lithium battery from the local to the world.

In recent years, lithium batteries have become a new growth point for my country's foreign trade exports. According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs of China, the export value of lithium-ion batteries in China will be close to 342.656 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 86.7%, a record high.

"High international energy prices promote the further release of demand for new energy products. In addition to lithium batteries, my country's exports of electric passenger vehicles have also risen, becoming a new growth point driving the export of electromechanical products." Spokesman of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products In an interview with a reporter from China Trade News, Gao Shiwang said that due to the high base and weak demand, exports of traditional industries have fallen, and the export volume of mechanical and electrical products such as mobile phones, computers, household appliances, machine tools, and construction machinery has declined year-on-year for many consecutive months.

Gao Shiwang said that last year, my country's mechanical and electrical foreign trade withstood multiple pressures such as weak external demand, poor supply, capacity transfer, and trade frictions. The export scale and trade surplus both reached new highs in the year. Emerging industries performed particularly well, and the industry's foreign trade volume rose steadily.

According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, in 2022, my country's exports of mechanical and electrical products will increase by 3.6% year-on-year to US$2,052.77 billion, breaking through US$2 trillion for the first time, a record high for three consecutive years; imports will drop by 8.2% year-on-year to US$1,045.85 billion; the trade surplus will be the first time Breaking through 1 trillion US dollars, expanding for 6 consecutive years.

"At the same time, there are still some problems in the development of the electromechanical industry." Gao Shiwang said, for example, that sea freight and raw material prices have fallen, the cost pressure of enterprises has eased, and the profit situation of enterprises has improved, but insufficient orders have become the main problem facing enterprises at this stage. In January 2023, the new export order index announced by the National Bureau of Statistics was 46.1%, which was lower than the overall level of the new order index of 50.9%, indicating that external demand was insufficient. In October 2022, the results of a survey conducted by China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products on 500 foreign trade enterprises in machinery and electronics also showed that more than half of the companies indicated that their orders in hand had decreased compared with the same period last year.

The current global economic growth is slowing down, and the downward pressure on the economy will increase in the future, and the overall consumption demand of various economies will decrease.

"Electronic information products, which account for nearly 30% of electromechanical exports, will continue to decline in the future due to weak international demand, and the growth momentum of electromechanical exports will slow down." Gao Shiwang said that my country's electromechanical industry as a whole is in a state of production capacity, technology, In the benign development stage of brand and operation, new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, lithium batteries and other industries are in line with international standards or even leading, and the future demand of emerging industries will be further released, thus forming an important support for the growth of mechanical and electrical exports. In the medium and long term, the export of mechanical and electrical products will return to low-speed growth under the huge base.

"Being forced by importers' requirements or proactively seeking production capacity, mechanical and electrical enterprises have a balanced distribution among regions." Gao Shiwang said that some enterprises have increased their initiative to transfer to México, Vietnam, Turquía and other regions close to the European and American consumer markets and ASEAN and other low-cost regions In order to seek diversification of supply, multinational companies are also making a new round of adjustments to the layout of production capacity on a global scale.

With the expansion of the export scale of my country's mechanical and electrical products and the growth of the supply capacity of emerging economies, the number of trade remedy investigations initiated by emerging markets against my country has gradually increased. Gao Shiwang suggested that more efforts should be made to support the development of emerging industries, encourage enterprises to build their own brands, and at the same time continue to attract foreign investment in China, support enterprises to participate in overseas exhibitions, conduct international market inspections, and provide more convenience for cross-border business exchanges of foreign trade enterprises. Actively play the platform role of the Import and Export Chamber of Commerce.