China’s year to date trade surplus of $1 trillion has set off another round of handwringing amongst mainstream western politicians and commentators. Amongst those is a piece in the Financial Times. I haven’t linked the FT piece here (it’s firewalled) but I did respond on X.

As for the equation, that’s a little teaser for a piece on understanding China’s manufacturing trade surplus and why the standard riposte - that the RMB is overvalued - is a misleading take in a world of complex Global Value Chains. This should come out in the next 48 hours.