China’s exports to the US are set to fall this year for the first time since the height of the global financial crisis. The value of US merchandise imports from the Middle Kingdom has fallen 4.7% this year, based on annualized data for the first 10 months of 2016, according to Standard Chartered, putting them in line for their first annual decline since 2009. This year’s decline marks a sharp turnaround from the period between 2010 and 2015, when the annualized growth rate was 5.6%, Reuters reports. Although the renminbi has fallen 5.9% against the dollar so far this year, Thomas Costerg, senior US economist at StanChart, does not believe it was a factor in the declining dollar value of China’s exports to the US, arguing that these exports tended to be priced in greenbacks, not redbacks.