According to customs statistics, in the first five months of 2026, Shanghai’s cumulative import and export reached 2.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.9%. Based on a huge base, it still achieved a growth rate higher than the national average.
As of May 2026, Shanghai’s foreign trade has maintained growth for 16 consecutive months, demonstrating strong development resilience.
From the perspective of trading partners, Shanghai’s imports and exports to the world’s major economies have achieved positive growth: in May this year, imports and exports to the United States increased by 14.8% year-on-year, with export growth reaching 43.1%. On the one hand, the outstanding growth rate stems from the rebound space left by the low base in the same period last year.
time, on the other hand, it also reflects the strong dependence of trade between China and the United States. U.S. companies are seizing the current window period to replenish inventory, lock in transaction prices, and rush to deliver orders. During the same period, imports and exports to ASEAN were 70.11 billion yuan, an increase of 26.4%; imports and exports to the EU were 69.57 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6%.
The explosion of the artificial intelligence industry has become one of the core driving forces for the growth of Shanghai’s foreign trade. From January to May this year, Shanghai’s import and export of integrated circuits, storage components, and automatic data processing equipment spare parts increased by 25.6%, 170%, and 900% respectively. The three products combined drove the city’s foreign trade growth by 10.5 percentage points.
Behind the growth is the complete manufacturing industry chain of computing power components in and around Shanghai, coupled with the policy advantages of the free trade zone. At present, integrated circuit giants such as South Korea and the United States have deployed Asia-Pacific transit warehouses for computing power-related products such as GPU storage and SSD in Shanghai. This not only supports the construction needs of domestic intelligent computing centers, but also provides services for the computing power infrastructure in Southeast Asia and other regions around the world. Flexible and high-frequency cargo dispatch directly boosts the scale of foreign trade.
Seizing the market opportunities arising from rising global traditional energy prices, Shanghai New Energy Products successfully broke through with its profound industrial foundation and achieved a double leap in export scale and quality.
Data show that in May 2026, Shanghai’s “three new items” of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products exported a total of 21.94 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 61.6%.
At present, Shanghai’s new energy exports have formed a “chain overseas” pattern from power generation, transmission and distribution to storage, not only exporting products, but also exporting a complete set of energy solutions.
For example, the energy industry’s global AI intelligent agent created by a local new energy company in Shanghai can generate exclusive energy management strategies based on users’ different needs such as saving electricity bills, increasing the proportion of green electricity usage, ensuring backup power, optimizing power station operations, etc., based on multi-dimensional data such as weather, electricity prices, photovoltaic power generation, battery status, load changes, and grid demand, and automatically execute it after confirmation by the user.
Up to now, the company’s business has covered more than 120 countries around the world, and it has cooperated with more than 20,000 high-quality installers.
Robot export is another highlight of Shanghai’s foreign trade.
According to statistics, in the first five months of 2026, the export value of various individually listed robots at Shanghai Port reached 8.36 billion yuan, and the products were exported to 113 countries and regions around the world. The export scale accounted for more than 40% of the country’s total robot exports, ranking first in the country, and has formed a large-scale export advantage.
From the perspective of export structure, cleaning robots represented by sweeping robots are the main category of Shanghai’s robot exports, accounting for 71.6% of Shanghai’s total port robot export value. Export orders from leading companies this year have increased by more than 50% year-on-year, and demand in traditional markets such as Europe and North America continues to be strong.
During the same period, industrial robot exports increased by 39.5% year-on-year, successfully entering the markets of traditional industrial robot powers such as Germany and Japan.
It is worth mentioning that in order to adapt to the export development needs of the intelligent robot industry, relevant departments have previously launched optimized adjustments to tariff policies based on enterprise demands, adding exclusive tax numbers for “intelligent bionic robots” and “cleaning robots”. This policy will be officially implemented on January 1, 2026. Domestic intelligent bionic robots and cleaning robots will now have exclusive 8-digit tariff numbers for import and export, providing institutional support for the facilitation and standardized development of the industry’s import and export.
