China will soon account for less than half of the US’s low-cost imports from Asia for the first time in more than a decade, new data has shown, as western companies shift operations out of the country.According to an annual reshoring index from Kearney, the Chicago-based management consulting firm, US efforts to reduce reliance on China, as well as price-sensitive American buyers, are driving trade towards lower-cost alternatives in Asia.

“By the end of 2023, China’s portion of US imports” from low-cost Asian countries, which excludes Japan and South Korea, “will definitely have dropped below 50 per cent”, said Patrick Van den Bossche, one of the report’s authors.

The US and China are each other’s largest respective trading partners. Last year, Chinese goods made up 50.7 per cent of US manufactured imports from Asian countries, according to the Kearney Reshoring Index, which is based on US trade data. That was down from nearly 70 per cent in 2013.