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China’s export growth slowed to the lowest in six months in August, as Beijing shipped less to the US amid tariff tensions.

Exports from China rose by 4.4% year-on-year, according to official figures, less than economists had expected, and down from July’s better-than-expected 7.2% increase. Imports grew by 1.3%, down from a 4.1% rise in July.

Beijing’s shipments to the US fell by 33% while exports to southeast Asian nations rose by 22.5%. Policymakers want manufacturers to shift to other markets in light of Donald Trump’s erratic trade policy.

The US president delayed sweeping tariffs on China in mid-August, announcing another 90-day pause just hours before the last agreement between the the world’s two largest economies was due to expire.

Trump had threatened tariffs on China as high as 245%, with China threatening retaliatory tariffs of 125%. However, Chinese imports are subject to a a baseline tariff of 10% and a 20% extra levy in response to fentanyl smuggling allegations against China. Some products are taxed at higher rates.

China’s trade surplus rose to $102.3bn in August from $98.2bn in July, but below June’s $114.8bn. Analysts are waiting to see whether officials will rollout extra fiscal support measures in the fourth quarter to revive domestic demand.

Separately, Germany’s exports fell unexpectedly in July while industrial production rose.

Shipments from Europe’s biggest economy dropped by 0.6% from the previous month, against economists’ forecasts of a 0.1% gain. Imports were also down, by 0.1%. The country’s foreign trade surplus reduced to €14.7bn from €15.4bn in June, and compared with €17.7bn in July 2024.

On a brighter note, German industrial production rose by 1.3% in July.

Oil prices climbed, recouping some of last week’s losses, after the oil cartel Opec and allies such as Russia, known as Opec+, agreed over the weekend to raise output at a slower pace from October on expectations of weaker global demand. The possibility of more sanctions on Russia, a major oil exporter, also rose after Moscow’s overnight strike on Ukraine.

Brent crude rose by 1.5% to $66.45 a barrel.

On Sunday, eight members of OPEC+ agreed to lift production from October by 137,000 barrels per day, far below the monthly increases of 555,000 bpd in September and August, and 411,000 bpd in July and June.

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Paul Graham, the cofounder of startup incubator Y Combinator, said on Saturday that students should think twice before launching their startups in high school.

“The thing to do now is to learn new things and increase your skill at the things you already know,” Graham wrote in a post on X.

“Startups are rarely the optimal way to do this. The point of a startup is to make something people want, not to learn,” he added.

Representatives for Graham at Y Combinator did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Graham said it probably isn’t the best idea for a high schooler to start their entrepreneurship journey right away, even though they could learn from the experience.

“You will learn things in a startup, of course. But the way to learn the fastest is to work on whatever you’re most curious about, and you don’t have that luxury in a startup. In a startup, you have to work on whatever users want most,” he wrote in a follow-up post on X.

Most prominent startup founders began their ventures after graduating from high school. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard during their junior and sophomore years, respectively.

Some, like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, earned their bachelor’s degrees before starting their first companies.

Graham has posted career advice on X. In August, Graham said in a series of X posts that the best way to secure one’s job in the age of AI is to focus on honing one’s passions.

“What AI (in its current form) is good at is not so much certain jobs, but a certain way of working. It’s good at scutwork. So that’s the thing to avoid,” Graham wrote.

In his post, Graham said low-level programming jobs “are already disappearing.”

Top programmers, meanwhile, are still “being paid exceptional amounts,” he added.

“So if I had to boil down my advice to one sentence, it would be: Find a kind of work that you’re so interested in that you’ll learn to do it better than AI can,” Graham wrote.