ECB’s Panetta: Chinese Exports to Europe Are Increasing, Prices Have Fallen

21 January 2026

By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Fabio Panetta said on Wednesday that Chinese exports to Europe have been increasing, while prices have declined in recent months.

Speaking at the meeting of the Executive Board of the Associazione Bancaria Italiana, Panetta, who heads the Banca d’Italia, said that the global economy had performed better than expected last year.

There have been no recessions or slowdowns, he said, and the US, which was expected to grow by 1.5% in 2025 according to the IMF’s April forecasts, was now expected to grow by between 2.2% and 2.5%.

“I have many uncertainties about the impact of tariffs, how international trade will then be influenced by these imposed tariffs. There may be delays,” he said.

Given China’s limited access to the US market, the country was trying to expand in other markets like Europe, according to Panetta.

“Export prices of Chinese goods have fallen in recent months,” he said. “This is a strategy of market penetration, and Chinese exports to Europe are increasing, including to Italy.”

He said that this dynamic helped explain Germany’s current difficulties, adding that the technological content of Chinese products was “now comparable, if not even higher” than that of goods from major industrial economies like Germany.

Global trade was being “reallocated” globally, he said, and trade linked to microchips and artificial intelligence-related components were “expanding in a very, very significant way.”

Panetta said that AI was already having an impact on the US economy, which had registered higher growth than expected and slightly lower inflation than feared, despite the tariff impact.