Portuguese-speaking countries recorded a more than 30-percent drop in exports to China in the first two months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, according to customs data shared by Forum Macao.
Exports from Portuguese-speaking countries to China fell to US$17 billion in January and February, down 30.7 percent. It represents the lowest export value from the bloc for the first two months since 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic was raging.
The sharp decline was driven by a one-third drop in goods imported from Brazil, China’s largest trading partner in the bloc. The South American giant sold US$13.7 million worth of goods to China in the first two months of the year, accounting for just over 80 percent of total imports from the lusophone world.
The next two largest trading partners, Angola and Portugal, also saw their sales to China drop by double digits, down to US$2.37 billion (-16.4 percent) and US$444.4 million (-13 percent) respectively.
[See more: Macao’s foreign trade grew in February]
Only Mozambique saw improvement in the two-month period, up over a third (34.4 percent) over the same period last year to US$332.2 million.
China saw a more modest drop in its exports to Portuguese-speaking countries, down 9 percent to US$12.2 billion for January and February 2025. Sales to Brazil, representing nearly 85 percent of Chinese goods sold to lusophone nations in the first two months of the year, dipped 7.8 percent to US$10.3 billion.
Rounding out the top three, Portugal dropped 10.5 percent to US$932.4 million while Angola bought US$471.86 million in goods, a decline of 7.7 percent compared to the same two-month period last year.
China recorded a trade deficit of US$4.78 billion with the lusophone world in the first two months of 2025, with total trade reaching US$29.2 billion, down 23.1 percent from the same period in 2024.
