China now accounts for 40% of the world’s container exports on a rolling three-month basis, a 2.5% increase from nine months ago and its highest-ever level, according to Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.
The surge is feeding concern in Europe and the United States that China is not being boxed in by tariff policy, but adapting around it. Eskelund warned that Europe is seeing a growing trade imbalance as cheaper goods from China flood its markets, squeezing local manufacturers and reducing the continent’s share of global exports.
The U.S. is facing a similar dynamic. The report links China’s rise to the earlier 'China Shock' of the early 2000s, when a wave of Chinese products reached American shelves after China joined the World Trade Organization and left pockets of the country with job losses and stagnant wages. Economists now warn of a possible 'China Shock 2.0' that could reach beyond retail into AI infrastructure and electric vehicles.
Jeremi Suri, a public affairs and history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said China is becoming 'the workshop of the world' and argued that 'almost every global economy is one way or another dependent on China.' He called the tariff policies of the last two years 'an unmitigated disaster' and said they have made the problem worse for the United States.
The story of China’s export growth is not only about tariffs. The report says China’s path has been decades in the making, from its shift away from isolationist policies to its role in global trade after joining the WTO 25 years ago. It also says Chinese firms, buoyed by an undervalued currency, can charge up to 30% less than other countries to export goods.
At the same time, tariffs may have encouraged more exports rather than fewer. The article says the import taxes shut China out of parts of the U.S. market, pushing exporters to seek customers elsewhere and encouraging transshipments, a form of tariff dodging in which intermediate parts are sent through countries with lower tariff rates before being assembled and sold to the U.S.
The White House last month released a report claiming the U.S. lost between $19 billion to $26 billion in tax revenue from transshipments, with China being the primary culprit. The Trump administration has since broadened the definition of transshipments to include goods linked to China or where China plays a role in the supply chain.
Andrew Greenland, a professor of economics at North Carolina State University who specializes in U.S. tariff policy, said the rise in shipments does not necessarily prove China is gaining a larger share of global trade. He said the data could reflect transshipments and diversions rather than a clean increase in China’s direct export power.
The market has already voted on tariff politics: when Washington uses import taxes as a blunt instrument, capital and supply chains reroute. The result is not cleaner trade, but more complexity, more evasion, and more pressure on American manufacturers and taxpayers.
For policymakers, the warning is simple. Trade rules that punish broad swaths of commerce often end up rewarding the most agile exporters and penalizing the domestic firms they were supposed to protect. Capital rewards clear rules, not improvisation.
