A few days ago, the National Bureau of Statistics officially released national rubber tire casing production and operation data for May 2026. The data shows that domestic tire production has accelerated in a single month, and the overall supply side of the industry has shown a clear recovery trend. However, the trend of domestic and foreign sales market differentiation has become increasingly obvious, becoming the development variable that industry practitioners and foreign trade merchants are most concerned about.
Core production data shows that in May 2026, the national rubber tire casing production reached 107.309 million units, a year-on-year increase of 4.6%, and a slight increase of 0.79% from April 2026. The single-month output has officially reached the 100 million mark, which also reflects that the production operating rate of the entire industry has remained in a stable and healthy range.
Judging from the cumulative data, the cumulative production of domestic rubber tire casings from January to May 2026 reached 501.71 million units, a year-on-year increase of only 1.9%. This data also intuitively reflects the weak overall demand in the tire market in the first four months of this year. The increase in May has not yet completely offset the pressure of the early market downturn.
Looking at subdivided categories, the demand differences between different tire categories are very significant: among them, the production of all-steel tires for trucks and buses in May increased by 10.58% year-on-year. This growth was mainly due to the effective increase in domestic heavy truck production and sales, which effectively stimulated the demand for supporting tires; the production of semi-steel tires for passenger cars in May increased by 5.54% year-on-year, but the month-on-month data declined, mainly due to the traditional off-season in the domestic replacement market, which slowed down the overall shipment pace.
On the cost side, the recent decline in international crude oil prices has effectively alleviated the pressure on synthetic rubber production costs. The operating profits of tire manufacturers have been slightly restored, and more operating space has been reserved for the company’s subsequent product research and development and overseas market expansion.
In sharp contrast to the recovery of the domestic production end, the pressure on the tire export end is: data shows that in May 2026, domestic tire export volume and export value both declined year-on-year, mainly due to multiple factors such as increased overseas trade barriers and intensified competition among overseas local tire brands. In order to maintain the existing market share, many foreign trade companies have to adopt a price-for-volume strategy, and profit margins are further compressed.
Industry analysts pointed out that in the short term, the supply of the domestic tire industry is very sufficient, but the problem of imbalanced internal and external demand is still prominent. Subsequent tire companies may focus on optimizing product structure by relying on new energy vehicle supporting tires, high-end engineering special tires and other tracks to hedge against export pressure.
For Chinese tire companies planning to go overseas, instead of fighting a price war in the existing Red Sea market at the current stage, it is better to rely on the domestic complete industrial chain supporting advantages and technology accumulation to seize market share in high-end segmented tracks, gradually establish the global influence of Chinese tire brands, and open up long-term growth space.
