1. It's all about IT electronics. China export data weakened in March, but looking at East Asian trade for Q1 as a whole it's still clear that IT/electronics exports are rocketing upwards compared to other categories - and compared to the rest of EM.
2. Prices are surging, but it's still mostly volumes. Huge price spikes for processing and memory chips are now showing up in the data, particularly in February and March, but the numbers still show that the main story is in volume demand.
3. US AI spending is the main culprit. A look at import statistics clearly points to the US as the biggest driver by destination, and AI-related investment as the main underlying source of demand.
4. We don't know how long this will persist. As a result, the answer to the question "How long can this go on?" is, "As long as the AI spending boom lasts." ... (And we don't know how long that is.)