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Glimmers of a government-fuelled recovery in China are boosting that country's imports of certain key commodities and buoying hopes of a rebound in global trade from its historic collapse.

The latest trade numbers released Tuesday by China, the U.S. and Canada all offer modest pockets of cheer in a global trade picture still darkened by the shadow of recession. Along with higher Chinese imports of metals and oil, signs of a bottoming in U.S. demand signal that the worst may be over.

But the improvement is not strong enough to suggest that a recovery is firmly under way.

“The main message that seems to be coming out of these figures is that the massive declines we saw late last year and early this year have abated,” said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO Nesbitt Burns. “But it's hardly like we're free and clear.”

Canada managed to post a trade surplus of $1.1-billion in March, up from $262-million the previous month, because imports plunged while exports lost only a little ground. Still, the declines in both were modest, compared with their steep drop during the deep freeze that gripped Canadian trade at the end of 2008 and into 2009.

There is growing anecdotal evidence to back up the data. At Port Metro Vancouver, for example, shipping companies have actually been moving extra empty containers to the port to be loaded for export of such commodities as specialty grains and forest products.

China has been taking advantage of low commodity prices for such industrial essentials as copper, iron and oil to bolster reserves.

On the crucial export side, though, China's outlook remains gloomy. Shipments fell a worse-than-forecast 22.6 per cent in April, following a 17.1-per-cent drop in March – marking the sixth consecutive monthly decline.

“These figures show we cannot be optimistic about the future trends for exports,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a blunt statement.

Yet China's economy is still expanding, thanks in no small measure to massive government spending on infrastructure and other stimulus measures. One result: Investment in urban fixed assets shot up 30.5 per cent in the first four months of this year.

The result is a widening divide between the battered private manufacturing sector, which remains heavily dependent on the U.S. and other foreign export markets, and a public sector benefiting from the injection of vast amounts of government capital.

“We have seen the worst in the export and manufacturing slump … but absolute levels remain depressed, with no recovery in sight from the end-user U.S. and EU markets,” investment bank CLSA said in a client note.

In Canada, economists had been forecasting a $500-million surplus in March, thanks to rising commodity prices and a restarting of auto production after widespread shutdowns earlier in the year.

But neither of those dynamics came to pass. Energy exports contracted 1.4 per cent because of a decline in volume, even though prices were climbing for the first time since last July. And exports of automotive products dropped another 3.3 per cent because of decreases in foreign sales of trucks and motor vehicle parts, Statistics Canada said.

“The takeaway from this report is that despite the better-than-expected headline number, all is not on the mend in Canadian trade,” said Charmaine Buskas, senior economics strategist at TD Securities Inc. “There are still significant headwinds that will likely limit the pace of exports, and Canadian consumers are increasingly wary of making any big purchases as domestic fundamentals head south.”

In the United States, imports and exports also shrank, as the trade deficit widened in March to a better-than-expected $27.6-billion (U.S.) from $26.1-billion in February. The 2.4-per-cent drop in exports was far milder than monthly declines of 6 per cent or so that had become commonplace since last fall.

And when always-volatile oil is subtracted from the U.S. trade equation, imports were down only 1.7 per cent. That indicates that the pace of inventory liquidation in the U.S. economy is slowing, which should pave the way for better import numbers down the road.

“At least on the import side, we're seeing kind of a convergence towards less downward pressure,” said Brian Bethune, IHS Global Insight's chief U.S. financial economist. “As that pressure diminishes, we should get back to much less disturbing numbers. But on the export side, it still looks pretty weak.”

With files from reporter David Ebner in Vancouver