China used its trade juggernaut to withstand US tariffs. Can it keep its edge?

As US duties on Chinese imports spun higher and higher earlier this year, Derek Wang braced for major disruption.

With US orders ground to a halt, Wang, 36, who sells intelligent cookware out of southern China’s Guangdong province, looked elsewhere to fill the gap. After finding new buyers in Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and Cambodia, he learned what he describes as a key lesson: “Nothing is more important than the markets close to us.”

Stories like Wang’s have played out across China’s vast economy where businesses, large and small, scrambled to fill the void after temporary triple-digit duties – and the threat of their return – upended Chinese exports to the world’s wealthiest market.

The result has been a coup for China’s trade juggernaut.

Instead of seeing exports falter on lost US business, the world’s largest manufacturer has driven them deeper into other markets around the world – building on the country’s global economic footprint and hedges companies made during Trump’s first trade war.