The volume of trade between the U.S. and China rebounded from April 2022's low. The change comes as the Chinese government began lifting some of its latest series of COVID lockdowns during the month.
That portends well for trade between the U.S. and China, because China's government continued lifting the burden of its zero-COVID policies in June 2022. For now, what it means is that the overall trajectory of trade between the two countries moved to converge with the projection of our post-pandemic trade recovery counterfactual. That slow convergence is shown in the following chart:
Through May 2022, the gap between that trajectory and the post-pandemic trade recovery counterfactual shown by the dashed red line narrowed to $0.2 billion. We anticipate a continued improvement in June 2022.
References
U.S. Census Bureau. Trade in Goods with China. Last updated: 7 July 2022. Accessed 7 July 2022.