BEIJING — China’s imports of unwrought aluminum and aluminum products climbed 14.7 percent year-on-year in May, customs data showed on Wednesday.
China, the world’s top consumer of the light metal, imported 350,000 metric tons of unwrought aluminum and products last month, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.
The data includes primary metal and unwrought, alloyed aluminum.
In the first five months of 2025, China imported a total of 1.67 million tons of unwrought aluminum and products, down 6.9 percent from the same period in 2024.
Imports of bauxite, a key raw material for aluminum, jumped 29.4 percent year-on-year to 17.51 million tons in May, bringing the total from January to May to 85.18 million tons, up 33.1 percent year-on-year.
China’s export growth slowed to a three-month low in May as US tariffs slammed shipments, while factory-gate deflation deepened to its worst level in two years, heaping pressure on the world’s second-largest economy on both the domestic and external fronts.
US President Donald Trump’s global trade war and the swings in Sino-US trade ties have in the past two months sent Chinese exporters, along with their business partners across the Pacific, on a roller coaster ride and hobbled world growth.
Underscoring the US tariff impact on shipments, customs data showed that China’s exports to the US plunged 34.5 percent year-on-year in May in value terms, the sharpest drop since February 2020, when the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic upended global trade.
Total exports from the Asian economic giant expanded 4.8 percent year-on-year in value terms last month, slowing from the 8.1 percent jump in April and missing the 5.0 percent growth expected in a Reuters poll, customs data showed on Monday, despite a lowering of US tariffs on Chinese goods which had taken effect in early April.
