MellkarChina has not reported 2025, and that moves every average in the sector
In August 2026 we asked the United Nations trade database how much synthetic rubber China exported in 2025. The answer was: nothing. In none of the eight headings we track.
It is not that China stopped exporting. It is that it has not declared it yet.
The lag is uneven
Comtrade publishes what each country sends it, and each country sends it when it can. In August 2026, this was the picture:
| Reporting 2025 | Still on 2024 |
|---|---|
| United States, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Germany, Korea | China, Côte d'Ivoire, Vietnam, Peru, Costa Rica |
That one-year gap is not an administrative detail when the laggard is the world's biggest seller. In 2024, China exported:
- 1,150,144 tonnes of synthetic rubber (heading 4002)
- 300,793 tonnes of SBR
- 139,840 tonnes of floor coverings, where it is the world's leading exporter
With 100% coverage across all eight headings and between 65 and 194 trading partners per query. When China reports, it reports well.
What happens to an average missing the leader
A weighted average price gives each country the weight of its volume. Removing China from 2025 is not removing a country: it is removing the one that weighs most.
We saw it clearly in floor coverings. With the exporter list lacking China, the average departure price came to 4.69 dollars a kilo — an average dominated by Germany, the United States and Japan, who sell the high end. Once China entered, with 140,000 tonnes at 2.30, that same average moved to 2.63.
The figure did not change because the market moved. It changed because the market was finally whole.
How we handled it
The temptation is to always use the latest year available, because it is the freshest. The consequence is publishing 2025 averages computed without the world's biggest seller.
We did the opposite: each heading's summary is computed over the most recent year in which every essential country is present. If the latest one lacks them, we step back a year.
Today that means seven of the eight headings are summarised over 2024 rather than 2025. It is a less fresh figure and a truer one.
With one qualification that matters: an essential country is only required in the headings where it genuinely participates. China does not export natural rubber in material quantity, so demanding it there would leave that heading waiting forever for data that is not coming. Natural rubber is summarised over 2025.
The tables still show the freshest figure
What is pinned to a single year is only the summary, because it is a subtraction and subtracting different years means nothing. The country-by-country tables still show each one's most recent figure — 2025 for those who have it — with the year marked beside the volume when it lags.
That way both things are visible: what each country declares on its own, and what can be compared with what.
The lesson, for anyone using this data
If you are going to cite an international trade average for a recent year, ask first who is missing. It is not a rhetorical question: the list of who has reported is available and takes a minute to check.
A 2025 average without China, in any product where China leads, is not a 2025 average. It is an average of the punctual countries, which is a different thing and almost never the one you meant to measure.