Cambodia’s first-quarter trade and investment data dropped in recent days, putting its US and China relations in statistical relief after Donald Trump imposed new 49% tariffs on the country.
According to the General Department of Customs and Excise (GDCE), in Q1 2025, China accounted for 49.1% of imports worth US$3.7 billion, up almost 31% from the same period last year.
Vietnam came in second place at 14.2%, followed by Thailand at 11.8%. All other countries were in the low single digits—the US, in 11th place, accounted for just 1% of Cambodia’s imports, valued at $78 million, which nonetheless was up 31%.
The US accounted for 35% of Cambodia’s exports (worth $2.4 billion, up 22% from the same period last year). Vietnam was second at 18.4%, although this figure was down almost a tenth. The other countries were in single digits. China, in third place, bought just 5% of Cambodia’s exports.
Knitted apparel accounted for 21% of exports and unknitted apparel for 14%. If all of the garment, footwear and travel goods are lumped together, they accounted for around 55% of all exports.
After this sector, agriculture was the second most important. Cereals accounted for 9%, edible fruits and nuts accounted for 6%, and vegetables for 4%.
As for Cambodia’s imports, oil and gas were by far the single largest import good, costing $961 million, or almost 13% of all imports. After that were the materials for the garment industry.
Now, let’s turn to investment. According to the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the country approved 172 projects with a combined value of $2.5 billion in the first three quarters of the year, up 14% in value from the same period in 2024.
Around 56% of all this investment was from China and 34% from Cambodia. The US came in 9th place, behind Samoa, and accounted for just 0.9% of overall investment. Last year, the CDC approved investments worth $6.9 billion.
So, all in all, things are looking healthy for Cambodia’s economy. Interestingly, $1.4 billion worth of investment, so more than half of the overall Q1 numbers, was approved in March, suggesting anything but a downturn, although this was before Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement.
The immediate picture is that Cambodia’s economy is bifurcated. China provides the bulk of the investment and imports, while the US purchases the lion’s share of Cambodia’s exports.
However, it’s more complicated than that, which ought to be remembered since oftentimes, when talking about Cambodia’s dependency on the US and China, there’s a notion that one can separate a reliance on the US for exports and dependence on China for imports and investment.
However, a significant percentage of Cambodia’s imports from China are raw materials stitched together in the country’s garment factories and then exported mostly to the US. The GDCE doesn’t break down import/export type by country but the OEC does.
In 2023, for instance, China accounted for around 60% of all the knitted fabric and cotton that Cambodia imported. That year, more than 45% of China’s exports to Cambodia were the raw materials for the garment sector, and probably another 10-20% was machinery or other products likely to be used by garment factories.
Meanwhile, the US purchased around a third of Cambodia’s garment exports and around 85% of all American imports from Cambodia were garment-related. Thus, if exports to America fall, Cambodia’s imports from China will also fall—and, most likely, Chinese investment in Cambodia as well.
Of the $6.9 billion worth of investment the CDC approved, the industrial sector (mostly garments) accounted for $4.8 billion. So, any downturn in garment exports would probably lead to a shortfall in Chinese investment.
More so, in fact, because Chinese companies are investing in other areas of the economy that are directly related to the manufacturing industry.
It’s a difficult estimate to make, but in 2020, the Ministry of Mines and Energy said that the garment manufacturing sector accounts for more than 40% of total electricity demand. There are also complaints that this sector still burns a lot of wood for energy.
So, there would be less demand for Chinese investment in the solar energy sector if Cambodia’s manufacturing industry takes a hit because of the US tariffs. The same would go for ports.
It isn’t obvious that a drop in Cambodian exports to the US will open up more opportunities for China to dominate Cambodia’s economy. After all, a bulk of Cambodia’s imports from China are garment-related, as is much of Chinese investment in Cambodia.
Moreover, other non-garment-related Chinese investment in Cambodia—from solar energy farms to ports and roads—is dependent on the country having a strong manufacturing and export-driven industry.
In other words, Beijing has a reason for not wanting the US to impose new high tariffs on Cambodia. Whether the Chinese Communist Party thinks about it that way, however, is another matter.
This article was first published on David Hutt’s Cambodia Unfiltered Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become a Cambodia Unfiltered subscriber here.
