China pushed past the United States in the third quarter to become the European Union's top trade partner, as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the US while Chinese activity rebounded.

Over the first nine months of 2020, trade between the EU and China totalled 425.5 billion euros ($514 billion), while trade between the EU and the United States came in at 412.5 billion euros, according to Eurostat data.

For the same period in 2019, the EU's trade with China came in at 413.4 billion euros and 461 billion euros with the US.

Eurostat said the result was due to a 4.5 percent increase in imports from China while exports remained unchanged.

"At the same time trade with the United States recorded a significant drop in both imports (-11.4 percent) and exports (-10.0 percent)," Eurostat said.

The EU has been China's top trade partner since 2004 when it overtook Japan, but this is the first time the inverse has been true, France's Insee statistics agency said Wednesday.

After a Covid-19-related shock in the first quarter the Chinese economy has rebounded, with the economy growing year-on-year in the third quarter.

Insee said Chinese imports from Europe picked up in the third quarter, while purchases of personal protective equipment had boosted Chinese exports.

Biden vows no quick rollback of Trump's China tariffs
Washington (AFP) Dec 2, 2020 - Joe Biden will keep Donald Trump's trade-war tariffs on China for the time being when he moves into the Oval Office next month, the president-elect has told US media.

Rancor and recrimination have defined the relationship between the world's two biggest economies over the last four years, with Trump slapping import fees on billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods with tariffs.

Biden meanwhile has been a strident critic of China's human rights record and analysts have predicted his administration will maintain a hawkish posture towards Beijing.

"I'm not going to make any immediate moves, and the same applies to the tariffs," Biden told the New York Times in an interview published Wednesday.

"I'm not going to prejudice my options."

Since winning last month's presidential election, Biden has hinted at a trade policy that would mend Washington's alliances with Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

He has said the United States must join forces with other world democracies to present a united front in global trade policy as a counterweight to China.

Biden has targeted Beijing on several fronts and singled out Chinese President Xi Jinping during a debate with other presidential candidates in February.

"This is a guy who doesn't have a democratic - with a small d - bone in his body," he said then. "This is a guy who is a thug."

His campaign also referred to the crackdown on the Muslim Uighur minority in China's Xinjiang province as a "genocide," provocative language to Beijing with potential ramifications under international law.

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