Macroeconomics

1. [PPI] National Bureau of Statistics: In July 2026, the national producer price index (PPI) for manufactured goods rose by 3.5% year-on-year and fell by 0.7% month-on-month. Producer purchase prices rose by 5.5% year-on-year and fell by 1.0% month-on-month. For the January–July period, producer prices for manufactured goods rose by 1.8% year-on-year, while producer purchase prices rose by 2.8%.

2. [CPI] National Bureau of Statistics: In July 2026, the national consumer price index (CPI) rose by 0.5% year-on-year; for the January–July period, the national CPI rose by 0.9% year-on-year. In July, the national CPI fell by 0.1% month-on-month.

3. [Import & Export] Customs data shows that in the first seven months of 2026, China's foreign trade in goods maintained a strong growth momentum, with the total value reaching 30.13 trillion RMB—a year-on-year increase of 17.3%. Of this total, exports amounted to 17.44 trillion RMB (up 14%) and imports to 12.69 trillion RMB (up 22%); the growth rate of imports continued to outpace that of exports.

4. [Excavators] According to the latest statistics from the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, 19,521 excavators of various types were sold in July 2026, a year-on-year increase of 13.9%. Domestic sales totaled 7,608 units (including 41 electric excavators), up 4.13% year-on-year, while exports reached 11,913 units (including 62 electric excavators), up 21.2%. Cumulative sales for the January–July period totaled 171,841 units, a year-on-year rise of 24.8%; domestic sales reached 86,633 units (up 18.8%), and exports totaled 85,208 units (up 31.7%).

5. [US Non-Farm Payrolls] Data shows that US non-farm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, whereas the market had anticipated an increase of approximately 80,000. Employment figures for the preceding two months were also significantly revised downward: the gain for May was adjusted from 129,000 to 63,000, and the gain for June was adjusted from 57,000 to 20,000—representing a combined downward revision of 103,000 jobs over the two-month period.

Steels

1. [Iron Ore] Workers employed by Australian mining giant BHP at Port Hedland in Western Australia began a two-day strike on the 8th, comprising a 24-hour ban on ship loading followed by a 24-hour work stoppage.

2. [Steel] The 1,780mm pickling and cold-rolling project at the Tosyali cold-rolling complex—constructed by Hebei Metallurgical Construction Group Co., Ltd.—recently successfully completed its hot-load commissioning and has smoothly entered the production phase.

3. [Galvanized Sheet] On August 7, monitoring of inventories in key domestic cities showed that social inventories of galvanized sheet coils stood at 1.5993 million tonnes for the week. This represented a week-on-week increase of 9,500 tonnes, a month-on-month increase of 600 tonnes, and a year-on-year increase of 310,500 tonnes.

4. [Steel Products] Customs data indicates that China exported 10.121 million tonnes of steel products in July 2026, with cumulative exports for the January–July period reaching 64.995 million tonnes—a year-on-year decrease of 4.4%. Steel product imports totaled 445,000 tonnes in July, with cumulative imports for January–July reaching 3.14 million tonnes—a year-on-year decrease of 10.1%.

5. [Steel] CISA: In late July 2026, key steel enterprises produced a total of 20.51 million tonnes of crude steel, with an average daily output of 1.864 million tonnes (down 7.5% month-on-month); 19.30 million tonnes of pig iron, with an average daily output of 1.754 million tonnes (down 4.7% month-on-month); and 21.80 million tonnes of steel products, with an average daily output of 1.982 million tonnes (up 2.7% month-on-month). Based on these figures, the estimated national daily output for this period was 2.52 million tonnes of crude steel (down 7.5% month-on-month), 2.22 million tonnes of pig iron (down 4.7% month-on-month), and 4.16 million tonnes of steel products (up 0.6% month-on-month).

At the end of July 2026, steel product inventories at key steel enterprises stood at 16.28 million tonnes. This represented a decrease of 1.85 million tonnes (10.2%) from the previous ten-day period; an increase of 2.14 million tonnes (15.1%) from the beginning of the year; a level basically unchanged from the same period last month; an increase of 1.50 million tonnes (10.1%) from the same period last year; and an increase of 0.23 million tonnes (1.4%) from the same period the year before last.

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