China's September Export Growth Tops Forecasts, Surplus With US Record High

China reported on Friday an unexpected acceleration in export growth in September and a record trade surplus with the United States, which could exacerbate an already-heated dispute between Beijing and Washington.

September exports rose 14.5 percent from a year earlier, Chinese customs data showed. That blew past forecasts for an 8.9 percent increase in a Reuters poll and was well above August's 9.8 percent gain.

Growth in imports for September instead showed a moderate slowdown to 14.3 percent from 19.9 percent in August, slightly missing analysts' forecast of a 15.0 percent growth.

China's trade surplus with the United States widened to a record in September despite wider application of U.S. tariffs, an outcome that could push President Donald Trump to turn up the heat on Beijing in their tradedispute.

The politically-sensitive surplus was $34.13 billion in September, surpassing the record of $31.05 billion in August.

China's export data has been surprisingly resilient to tariffs, possibly because companies ramped up shipments before broader and stiffer U.S. duties went into effect.

A weaker yuan (CNY=CFXS), which has depreciated about 6 percent against the dollar this year, may have taken the sting out of the tariffs imposed on $250 billion of exports to the United States.

Over the first nine months of the year, China's surplus with its largest export market totaled $225.79 billion, compared with about $196.01 billion in the same period last year.

FEELING HEAT

For trade with all countries, China logged a surplus of $31.69 billion for September, compared with forecasts in a Reuters poll for $19.4 billion and August's surplus of $27.89 billion.

China's economy is feeling the heat from a tit-for-tat tariff dispute and showing signs of slowing that prompted the central bank on Sunday to loosen policy by cutting banks' reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for a fourth time this year.

A U.S. Treasury official this week voiced concerns about China's recent currency depreciation.

With China's manufacturing sector cooling and export orders shrinking, Beijing has pledged to increase export tax rebates from Nov. 1 for the second time this year and promised to cut corporate burden on a larger scale to help struggling Chinese firms.

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday cut its global economic growth forecasts for this year and next, saying that the U.S-China trade war was taking a toll. It also slashed China's growth forecast for next year to 6.2 percent from 6.4 percent.

China will cut import tariffs on a wide range of goods beginning on Nov. 1, as part of Beijing's pledge to take steps to increase imports this year amid rising tension.

(Reporting by Elias Glenn, Lusha Zhang and Stella Qiu; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

-Reuters