China is EU's largest trading partner, overtaking the United States
Provisional EU foreign trade figures published by Eurostat reveal that China overtook the United States as the European bloc's largest trading partner during the first seven months of 2020. The slight increase of 4.9% in imports from the Asian country and a moderate reduction of 1.8% in European exports, together with the significant drop in trade with the US. (9.9% for sales and 11.7% for purchases) explain this advance, in a context marked by the coronavirus crisis. Indeed, the evolution of the pandemic has profoundly marked the development of EU trade during this period, with a sharp drop in trade from January and a recovery of momentum from the end of May, just as containment measures began to be gradually relaxed.
As a result, extra-EU exports during this period fell by 12.2% compared with the first seven months of 2019 to ?1.08 trillion, while imports from outside the EU fell by 13.1% to €990 billion. Behind China and the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russia and Turkey occupied the most relevant positions in the list of the 10 EU reference partners. Except in the case of European sales to South Korea, which increased by 3.5% to 26.7 billion euros, the evolution of exports was clearly negative with all of them, particularly with the United Kingdom (-20.5% to just over 150.5 billion euros) and India (with a fall of 24.1% to 17 billion).
In addition to China, Switzerland was the only country on this list to increase its exports to the EU in these months, by scarcely 0.9%, to 64.4 billion euros, while imports from most of the other main partners fell below double digits, even reaching almost 35 percent in the case of Russia.
In the specific case of Spanish foreign trade, and according to this source, our exports in the first seven months of the year fell by 15% compared to the same period in 2019 to reach 151,800 million euros, of which some 92,900 million euros corresponded to intra-community trade (14% less) and another 58,900 million euros to extra-community trade (17% less). Imports fell by 18% in these seven months compared to the same period last year, to reach 160,800 million euros, of which around 71,500 million came from beyond the EU's borders (20% less).
On the other hand, the first estimates of extra-EU exports in July show a fall of 11.3% compared to the same month in 2019, to a total of 189.9 billion euros, while those referring to imports reflect a decrease of 16.0%, as they stood at 142.6 billion. However, seasonally-adjusted data indicate a recovery in foreign trade in July for the third consecutive month in both the euro area and the EU, to levels similar to those prior to the pandemic. Thus, EU exports under these parameters increased by 5.7% in July compared to June, while imports rose by 4.2%.
