China March data seen showing solid growth but all eyes on
Trump-Xi meeting
Trump has foreshadowed the risk of talks being
tense, tweeting on Thursday that the United States could no longer
tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses.
A flurry of data in coming weeks is expected to show China posted
solid economic growth in March, as President Xi Jinping and President
Donald Trump meet for the first time this week with China's trade
surplus expected to be high on the agenda.
Trump has foreshadowed
the risk of talks being tense, tweeting on Thursday that the United
States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses.
While
Trump has not followed through yet on campaign threats to label China a
currency manipulator or impose punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, many
analysts reckon the new administration is just beginning to flex its
trade muscles.
China's import growth for March is likely to remain
strong, while exports could rebound modestly, according to Reuters
polls, producing an expected trade surplus of $10 billion after a rare
deficit in February.
Exports were expected to rise 3.2 percent,
while imports were seen up 18 percent, led once again by raw materials
such as iron ore which are feeding a months-long construction boom.
Imports
had surged 38 percent in February while exports unexpectedly dipped,
but China's data in the first two months of the year can be heavily
skewed by the timing of the Lunar New Year holidays, when many
businesses shut for a week or more.
Reflecting continued strength
in the manufacturing sector, and particularly heavy industry, China's
producer price index (PPI) likely rose 7.6 percent from a year earlier,
after jumping 7.8 percent in February, its fastest pace in nearly nine
years.
However, while factory surveys show manufacturers have been
able to pass on some higher input costs by raising prices of their
goods, there has been scant evidence of it flowing through to consumer inflation and becoming a worry for policymakers.
Many analysts
believe China's producer inflation may peak soon, and see consumer
inflation remaining mild. The consumer price index (CPI) is mainly
driven by prices of food, particularly pork, and services.
The CPI
likely rose 1.0 percent in March, after slowing to 0.8 percent in
February, its weakest pace since January 2015, as food prices fell.
Beijing is targeting consumer inflation at 3 percent this year,
unchanged from 2016.
China's foreign exchange reserves likely
edged up in March to $3.01 trillion after unexpectedly rising for the
first time in eight months in February, rebounding above $3 trillion as a
regulatory crackdown and a steadying yuan helped staunch capital
outflows.
The rebound in reserves could ease fears in global
markets that China will engineer another sharp one-off devaluation of
the yuan, which would run the risk of inflaming trade tensions with the
new
U.S. administration.
China announces foreign exchange reserves
on Friday, followed by inflation and trade data on Wednesday and
Thursday respectively, while loan and money data is expected anytime from April 10-15.OUTPUT DATA LIKELY TO SUGGEST SOLID Q1 GROWTH
China
will release first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) on April 17,
along with March industrial output, retail sales and fixed asset
investment.
Industrial output was expected to have remained at 6.3
percent in March, from 6.3 percent in Jan-Feb combined, while fixed
asset investment was likely to grow 8.8 percent, down from 8.9 percent
in Jan-Feb.
Retail sales were expected to grow 9.6 percent in
March, marginally better than 9.5 percent in Jan-Feb, which was the
weakest pace in nearly two years
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