Will the world’s two largest economies finally come to a fight over the price of cars?

Ahead of a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Donald Trump’s White House has made clear that it isn’t happy with China’s high tariffs on imported American automobiles. These contribute, it says, to the US’s total trade deficit with China, which was 3470亿美元 去年. Former Obama economic advisor Larry Summers also brought up the issue in a recent meeting 与中国总理 (paywall), Li Keqiang.

While the US taxes imported cars and cars parts at a maximum of 2.中国则征收21%至30%的关税. This gives foreign automakers who want to sell in China a big incentive to manufacture there to avoid the import charge. But China also requires foreign subsidiaries to operate as 50-50 joint ventures with Chinese companies. These, of course, then become classrooms for Chinese engineers to gain foreign know-how.

This isn’t exactly anyone’s definition of “fair” trade, but there is a logic to the situation. The system came into play in 2001, after China joined the World Trade Organization. 当时，中国的工业远远落后于美国. The idea was that future rounds of WTO negotiations would lower China’s trade barriers further, 但全球贸易谈判已经完全停滞不前.

讽刺的是, 因此, this “unfair” situation for America is a product of globalization’s stumbles, not the unyielding march forward that the Trump administration portrays it as. And any attempts to convince China to drop its protections will now be coming from the most protectionist American administration in recent memory.

Further complicating everything: Now that China is the largest car market on the globe, US firms are reluctant to complain 太 loudly about the lopsided rules for fear of being cut off completely—US firms and their joint ventures have a major share of the market.

Witness the latest annual report from General Motors, which sells more cars in China (3.9 million) than in the US (3 million) and saw its China business grow 13% 去年; one in 10 cars sold in China was a GM. “与合资伙伴保持良好关系, 有哪些是隶属于中国政府的, 是我们中国发展战略的重要组成部分,报告说. 与此同时，福特赚了1美元.去年中国有50亿美元的投资，估计有40亿美元.2%的市场份额.

然而, trade data suggest that high tariffs aren’t that much of an obstacle to direct car sales; what matters is quality. 中国对美国的汽车销售, 而增长, are still tiny because Chinese cars often don’t meet American standards, while American auto exports to China nearly doubled between 2012 and 2014, 在过去两年再次下滑之前. On this measure, the US has a car trade surplus with China, not a deficit.

考虑到整个全球供应链，而不仅仅是汽车, but car parts and auto bodies—makes the picture looks different. US companies are taking advantage of low tariffs to import car parts manufactured in China before finishing the cars in the US or Mexico. 考虑到所有的贸易, 然而, US auto trade actually showed a small surplus 去年 of $420 million. 在现行制度下, the gap is shrinking; in the last five years, 美国音响行业对中国的出口总额增长了59%, 而中国的进口增长了65%.

这些数字反映出这样一个事实:对美国汽车制造商而言, 就像其他美国跨国公司一样, 国外制造零部件, 哪里的劳动力成本低得多, 能降低成本，增加利润吗. They are likely tempted to follow the example of tech firms like Apple and move even more of their manufacturing overseas, but doing so would incur the political and economic wrath of the labor unions that dominate their American workforce.

There is also the question of shipping: Final assembly is often done in the market where the cars are sold to save on transit costs, 因为完成的汽车体积很大. 这些成本是其他一些外国汽车制造商的原因之一, 比如大众和丰田, have set up factories in the US despite America’s low tariffs on auto imports.

But even if they were willing to take more political heat for moving jobs abroad, US carmakers would like looser rules around the profit and information they must share with their Chinese partners beforehand.

US lawmakers of alls stripes will be hearing both the workers and the investors say the rules aren’t fair, and push the president to find a trade regime that will attract more investments—and more jobs—to the US side of the supply chain. 但目前尚不清楚他们会有什么影响力, 与日本, 韩国和欧洲的汽车制造商正在争夺市场, 太.

致中国人, 与此同时, the US carmakers’ success in their country despite the high tariffs and joint-venture rules reinforce the need for those protections; arguably, the Chinese auto industry would be even more vulnerable without them. After all, there is no Chinese car brand that dominates the US like General Motors does in China.

The Obama administration had hoped the Trans-Pacific Partnership could give it more negotiating power with China, 通过向美国汽车销售开放马来西亚和越南. US automakers rejected the deal because it also gave Japanese and other countries broader access to US markets. In any case, Trump pulled the US out of the deal soon after taking office. But there is still a pending WTO challenge against China for subsidizing auto parts makers, and that venue may be where the new administration’s nationalist trade negotiators focus their ire.

如果新政府听取美国公司的意见，那么 他们通常有, the advice may well be: Tread lightly; you’ve been warned already. “We do not want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries,” Li, 中国总理, 本月早些时候说过. “这不会使我们的贸易更加公平.”