Shell scripting: export test1="a b c" works, but $(echo 'export test2="a b c"') doesn't

I seem to be having issues with some shell scripting (ZSH in particular), where the shell fails to understand exports with spaces in them. The problem only happens when `runcommand` or $(runcommand) is used.

Test case:

# Works fine:
 export test1="a b c"
 
 # Does not work:
 $(echo 'export test2="a b c"')
 

The error is something along the lines of export:4: not valid in this context: c". Adding 1-2 \-escapes before the spaces and/or the quotes might change the error message to export:4: not valid in this context: b\.

Might anyone have insight into what the problem is? Thank you.

(The reason I am doing this is a hack to allow python to set shell variables by dynamically generating code which gets run in .myshellrc; if anyone knows of a more elegant way to do this, that would be quite welcome as a comment. Thank you.)

(*sigh*, I hope this isn't a version-specific issue in 4.3.12... I think this may have worked in the past.)

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