Economist Robin Brooks describes what he calls a complete reorientation of China’s export sector away from heavy exposure to the United States, without any easing of the wider export push. In country-by-country charts, he shows the pattern ending in a near-vertical spike. The rise had been under way for some time, but he says the pace typically picks up almost immediately after Donald Trump’s 2024 election, once Beijing judged that US market access would tighten.
Bulgaria is one of the countries he cites, together with Hungary, Poland, Jordan, Colombia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Suriname and a set of African economies including Morocco, Mali, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He notes that quite a few are small economies, which makes the spikes less of an achievement, while still treating the spread as significant.
Brooks argues that entering these markets is not cost-free. Discounting hits margins and profitability in China’s export sector, and he calls the result a deflationary shock. Andrew Stuttaford writes that Beijing can absorb that pressure because industrial strength, rather than a recovery in domestic demand, is the base of its geopolitical and military aims, with excess output sold abroad at prices that squeeze foreign competitors.
The same account sets the Bulgarian example inside a larger surplus. China’s global trade surplus was $1.2 trillion last year. The EU accounted for €360.6 billion in 2025, 15 percent more than in 2024, helped by American tariffs that diverted some goods toward Europe. Brooks’s later charts also show sharp increases for the EU and other larger economies beginning not long after the 2024 election.
Stuttaford cites an OECD finding that nearly 60 percent of China’s gains in global manufacturing market share between 2005 and 2024 were driven by state subsidies, with Chinese firms in solar panels, cars and steel receiving up to eight times more government support than peers in OECD countries over the two decades to 2024.