Retail sales in China grew by just 0.7% in the first nine months of the year.
This means that the gap between industrial output and consumption continued to widen in the third quarter, albeit at a slower pace.
At this rate, consumption as a share of GDP will fall by 1.7 percentage points this year.
China's trade surplus for the first nine months of 2022 was up 49% from a year earlier, which is itself a record trade surplus.
In general, China's surplus increased, so the U.S. deficit should expand, right?
According to GDPNow, U.S. exports are soaring and the trade deficit is shrinking.
With high domestic inflation and weak retail sales, U.S. real sales have fallen for five of the past seven months.
The question arises, so who is buying China's surging exports?
Europe?