China’s investment slumped further and retail sales expanded at their weakest pace since the crash caused by Covid, in another month of lopsided growth that’s inflaming trade tensions with the rest of the world.
While factory output is seeing little pullback, retail sales rose just 1.3% in November from a year ago — the slowest figures on record, outside the pandemic. That was worse than every estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, whose median forecast was for the growth pace to stay at 2.9% for a second month.
