China Merchants Macro: The possibility of a decline in the month-on-month growth rate of foreign trade in May is not high. The year-on-year growth rate will still maintain a relatively fast pace.

The Macro Research Report of China Merchants stated that the likelihood of a decline in month-on-month export growth in May based on high-frequency data is low, considering the significant decrease in the base figure, the year-on-year export growth rate may still maintain a relatively fast pace. The economic data for April shows that the domestic total demand situation still presents a pattern where external demand is stronger than internal demand. This is actually a somewhat unexpected situation. In theory, the US-Iran conflict should have a significant impact on global trade and therefore on the domestic economy. However, based on the April data, export growth remains strong, while domestic investment and consumption growth rates are clearly weakening. In other words, at least the economic performance in the first half of the year may still depend on the external trade situation. Based on the current high-frequency data, the domestic port cargo throughput and container throughput in the first four weeks of May have remained relatively stable. The average weekly cargo throughput is 264 million tons, slightly higher than the April weekly average; the average weekly container throughput is 6.6273 million TEUs, also slightly higher than the April weekly average. This may indicate that the month-on-month export data for May will not show a significant decline, while the year-on-year base in May is significantly lower than in April. Therefore, from the perspective of cargo volume, the likelihood of a significant decline in year-on-year exports in May is not very high.