A glut of cheap Chinese goods is flooding the world and stoking trade tensions

China’s factories are churning out more steel, cars and solar panels than its slowing economy can use, forcing a flood of cheap exports into foreign markets.

China’s factories are churning out more steel, cars and solar panels than its slowing economy can use, forcing a flood of cheap exports into foreign markets. The oversupply of Chinese goods in key industries is stoking tensions between the world’s biggest manufacturer and its major trading partners, including the United States and the European Union. Its global trade surplus in goods has soared and is now approaching $1 trillion. The United States and the EU are fretting over potential “dumping” by China — that is, exporting goods at artificially low prices — with electric vehicles among the products caught in the crosshairs. “Europe cannot just accept that strategically viable industries constituting the European industrial base are being priced out of the market,” Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told reporters earlier this month. But China needs to increase exports as a key measure to revive its economy, which is grappling with a protracted property slump, weak household spending and a shrinking population among other problems. Beijing is now focusing on higher-value exports, after investing billions into advanced manufacturing. But the move is badly timed, coming amid slower economic growth globally and a shift by Western consumers from pandemic-era spending on goods to travel and leisure.