The mid-year report card for China's textile and apparel foreign trade in 2026 appears steady on the surface but conceals a structural shift. According to the latest China Customs data, total exports for the first half reached $145.96 billion, up 1.4% year-on-year, maintaining a historically high level. However, the more telling figure is the June single-month export of $29.27 billion, a 7.2% YoY surge and 14.3% month-on-month rebound — signaling the official start of the overseas autumn-winter stocking season and exposing sharply divergent conditions upstream and downstream.
Intermediate Goods Show Resilience, Apparel Sector Still Under Pressure
The most striking feature of the H1 data is the structural divergence. Textile exports (yarns, fabrics, etc.) reached $73 billion, up 3.5% YoY, while apparel exports totaled $72.96 billion, edging down 0.7%. The two categories are nearly equal in volume but heading in opposite directions. Detailed data for the first five months further confirms this: yarn exports grew 6.6% YoY, fabric exports dipped only 0.5%, while apparel and accessories fell 1.6%.
What does this mean? Overseas brands are shifting to a low-inventory strategy, reducing large long-term apparel orders and instead placing frequent, smaller orders for semi-finished products like yarns and fabrics, which are then processed domestically or in third markets. China's complete supply chain — from chemical fibers, spinning, and dyeing to finished goods — offers delivery efficiency and quality that competing regions cannot easily replicate. This is the core reason for the sustained growth of upstream intermediates. In contrast, the apparel OEM segment has low entry barriers and faces intense international capacity diversion and price competition, a pressure unlikely to ease soon.
June Inflection Point: Autumn-Winter Stocking and the US as the Sole Growth Engine
June's data is a critical signal for the H2 outlook. Textile exports hit $13.52 billion, up 12.2% YoY and 7.4% MoM; apparel exports reached $15.75 billion, up 3.2% YoY and a sharp 21% MoM. The concentrated release of replenishment orders for garments, combined with strong performance in the fabric segment, created the 'late-month rebound' inflection point.
From a market perspective, the demand landscape is sharply fragmented. The US market was the single largest growth driver in H1, with export growth rates expanding 15 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The China-US summit stabilized market expectations, and as overseas brands completed inventory destocking, they increased procurement from Chinese supply chains. In contrast, traditional mature markets like the EU, Japan, and South Korea saw weakening growth momentum. The EU is grappling with high energy costs and inflation, dampening consumer apparel spending; ASEAN, Japan, and South Korea are constrained by regional tensions and rising energy prices, reducing their imports from China. Additionally, the temporary easing of Middle East tensions and falling shipping costs provided short-term boosts to June's overall export recovery.
Currency Fluctuations and the Mirror Image of RMB-Denominated Data
Switching to RMB-denominated statistics, H1 cumulative textile and apparel exports reached 1,012.22 billion yuan, down 2.2% YoY — a stark contrast to the 1.4% growth in USD terms. This highlights the direct erosion of export enterprise profits by exchange rate volatility. Textile exports were 506.42 billion yuan, down only 0.1%, showing strong risk resilience; apparel exports were 505.8 billion yuan, down 4.2%, indicating more pronounced profit pressure for garment manufacturers. June's RMB-denominated data also showed a recovery, with monthly exports of 200.25 billion yuan rising both YoY and MoM, but apparel still saw a slight YoY decline. The over-20% MoM surge primarily reflects real demand release rather than price-driven gains.
For foreign trade enterprises, exchange rate volatility has become a normalized risk factor. The RMB weakened against the USD overall in H1, but periodic strengthening still squeezed profits settled in RMB. If the USD continues to strengthen in H2, export enterprises may enjoy a temporary 'price advantage window,' but this cannot mask the long-term pressure on apparel sector margins from multiple fronts.
External Challenges Persist, Industry Backbone Lies in the Complete Chain
Looking ahead to H2, the global trade environment remains complex. The World Bank warns that the global economy will continue to face the triple pressures of rising energy prices, high inflation, and tightening monetary policies abroad, with global consumption growth weakening. The sluggish recovery of end-consumer demand in Europe and the US, persistently high production costs, and capacity competition from a fragmented global trade landscape will continue to test industry players.
But June's data has already pointed the way: the era of low-price, high-volume exports is over. The complete supply chain, product innovation, and a diversified global footprint are the core tools for the industry to navigate cycles. The resilience of textile intermediate goods orders versus the weakness of the apparel sector essentially reaffirms China's comparative advantage in textiles — in areas where supply chain efficiency and quality are irreplaceable, Chinese companies' moats remain deep; in lower-barrier OEM segments, capacity migration and price competition are inevitable.