China’s retail sales slowed to just 0.2% year-on-year in April, down from 1.7%, coming in much worse than market forecasts for a modest acceleration. This was the slowest month of growth since 2022. The weakness of retail sales was broad-based. There are two key themes for this month's data. The first theme is that we're now paying the price for front-loaded demand from the trade-in policy, which we have been warning about since last year. Auto sales also continued to show signs of weakness, down -15.3% YoY. Replacement demand for vehicles purchased in previous years hasn't come in yet, and many prospective buyers ... (full story)