It happened very quickly — so fast that you might not have noticed it. Over the past few months, America’s Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the oddly named company that owns Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep — landed in big trouble.

这发生得很快——快到你可能没有注意到。在过去的几个月里，美国三大汽车制造商——福特、通用汽车和斯泰兰蒂斯集团（就是那家拥有道奇、克莱斯勒和吉普，名字奇怪的公司）陷入了大麻烦。

I realize this may sound silly. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis made billions in profit last year, even after a lengthy strike by autoworkers, and all three companies are forecasting a big 2024. But recently, the Big Three found themselves outmaneuvered and missing their goals for electric vehicle sales at the same time that a crop of new affordable, electrified foreign cars appeared, ready to flood the global market.

我这个想法听起来可能有点蠢。尽管汽车工人长时间罢工，福特、通用汽车和斯泰兰蒂斯去年都挣了几十亿美元的利润，这三家公司也都预测将在2024年迎来大发展。但最近，三巨头发现自己落于人后，都没能实现电动车销售目标，与此同时，一批新的廉价外国电动车冒了出来，准备涌入全球市场。

About a decade ago, America bailed out the Big Three and swore it wouldn’t do it again. But the federal government is going to have to help the Big Three — and the rest of the U.S. car market — again very soon. And it has to do it in the right way — now — to avoid the next auto bailout.

大约十年前，美国政府对三大汽车制造商施以援手，并发誓以后不会再这样做了。不过，联邦政府很快将不得不再次帮助三巨头，以及美国汽车市场的其他组成部分。而且，政府这次需要以正确的方式来做这件事，这样才能事不过三。

The biggest threat to the Big Three comes from a new crop of Chinese automakers, especially BYD, which specialize in producing plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles. BYD’s growth is astounding: It sold three million electrified vehicles last year, more than any other company, and it now has enough production capacity in China to manufacture four million cars a year. But that isn’t enough: It’s building new factories in Brazil, Thailand, Hungary and Uzbekistan, which will produce even more cars, and it may soon add Indonesia and Mexico to that list. A deluge of electric vehicles is coming.

三巨头面临的最大威胁来自一批新的中国汽车制造商，尤其是专门生产插电式混合动力车和纯电动汽车的比亚迪。这家公司的增长速度令人震惊：它去年销售了300万辆电动车，超出所有竞争对手，它目前在中国的产能足以实现每年生产400万辆汽车。但这还不够：它正在巴西、泰国、匈牙利和乌兹别克斯坦设厂，并可能会在不久的将来把印度尼西亚和墨西哥加到生产地名单上去。电动汽车的洪流即将到来。

BYD’s cars deliver great value at prices that beat anything coming out of the West. Earlier this month, BYD unveiled a plug-in hybrid that gets decent all-electric range and will retail for just over $11,000. How can it do that? Like other Chinese manufacturers, BYD benefits from its home country’s lower labor costs, but this explains only some of its success. The fact is that BYD — and Chinese automakers like Geely, which owns Volvo Cars and Polestar brands — are very good at making cars. They have leveraged China’s dominance of the battery industry and automated production lines to create a juggernaut.

比亚迪以很高的性价比击败了所有来自西方的汽车。本月早些时候，比亚迪推出了一款插电式混合动力车，它有不错的纯电续航里程，零售价仅略高于1.1万美元（7.98万元）。比亚迪是如何做到这点的？与其他中国制造商一样，它也受益于国内较低的劳动力成本，但这只能解释部分成功。事实上，比亚迪——以及拥有沃尔沃和北极星品牌的吉利等中国汽车制造商——非常擅长造车。它们利用了中国在电池行业的主导地位，将生产线自动化，把自己变成了不可阻挡的巨无霸。

The Chinese automakers, especially BYD, represent something new in the world. They signal that China’s decades-long accretion of economic complexity is almost complete: Whereas the country once made toys and clothes, and then made electronics and batteries, now makes cars and airplanes. What’s more, BYD and other Chinese automakers are becoming virtually global car companies, capable of manufacturing electric cars that can compete directly with gas-burning cars on cost.

中国的汽车制造商，尤其是比亚迪，代表了世界上的一种新事物。它们标志着中国持续数十年的经济复杂性积累过程已接近完成：这个国家以前制造玩具和衣服，后来制造电子产品和电池，现在则制造汽车和飞机。更重要的是，比亚迪和其他中国车企正在成为事实上的全球汽车公司，有能力制造出在成本方面与燃油汽车直接竞争的电动车。

That is, on the surface, a good thing. Electric cars need to get cheaper and more abundant if we are to have any hope of meeting our global climate goals. But it poses some immediate and thorny problems for American policymakers. After BYD announced its $11,000 plug-in hybrid, it posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that “the price will make [gasoline] car assemblers tremble.” The problem is many of those gasoline carmakers are American.

表面上看，这是件好事。如果我们想实现全球气候目标的话，就需要更多的电动车，而且要更便宜。但这给美国的决策者们带来了一些迫切的和棘手的问题。比亚迪宣布推出售价7.98万元的插电式混合动力汽车后，它在中国社交媒体平台微博上发贴称，“这个价格会让（汽油）车制造商们瑟瑟发抖。”问题是，许多汽油车制造商在美国。

Ford and GM plotted an ambitious E.V. transition three years ago. But it didn’t take long for them to stumble. Last year, Ford lost more than $64,000 on every E.V. that it sold. Since October, it has delayed the opening of one of its new E.V. battery plants, while GM has fumbled the start of its new Ultium battery platform, which is meant to be the foundation for all of its future electric vehicles. Ford and GM have notched some wins here — the Mustang Mach-E and Chevrolet Bolt are modest hits — but they aren’t competing at the level of Tesla or Hyundai — companies that operate factories in less unx-friendly states in the Sun Belt.

福特和通用汽车曾在三年前制定了雄心勃勃的电动车转型计划。但没过多久，它们就遇到了困难。去年，福特每销售一辆电动车就亏损逾6.4万美元。自去年10月以来，福特已推迟了其中一家新建电动汽车电池厂的开工。而通用汽车则在启动新的Ultium电池平台方面遇到了问题，该平台被普遍认为是其未来所有电动车的基础。福特和通用汽车在电动车方面取得了一点成功——福特的野马Mach-E和通用的雪佛兰Bolt销量还行，但它们没有达到特斯拉或现代汽车那样的水平，这两家汽车制造商的工厂设在对工会不太友好的“阳光地带”州。

Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, recently disclosed that the company had a secret development team building a cheap, affordable electric car to compete with Tesla and BYD. But producing electric vehicles profitably is an organizational skill, and like any skill, it takes time, effort and money to develop. Even if Ford and GM now bust out innovative new designs, they will lag behind their competition at executing them well.

福特的首席执行官吉姆·法利最近透露，公司已有一个秘密研发团队，正在研发一款可与特斯拉和比亚迪竞争、廉价、实惠的电动车。但生产电动车并实现盈利需要有组织能力上的技能，与其他所有技能一样，发展这种能力需要时间、精力和资金。即使福特和通用汽车现在推出创新的设计，它们在完美地执行这些设计方面仍将落后于竞争对手。

The other looming problem for Ford and General Motors is that their balance sheets, while superficially robust, conceal a structural vulnerability. While the two companies have done generally well in recent years, their billions in profits have overwhelmingly flowed from selling a relatively small number of vehicles to a small group of people. Specifically, Ford and GM’s earnings rest primarily on selling pickup trucks, S.U.V.s and crossovers to affluent North Americans.

福特和通用汽车面临的另一个迫在眉睫的问题是，它们的资产负债表虽然表面稳健，但掩盖了一个结构性的弱点。尽管这两家公司近年来的总体表现良好，但它们几十亿美元利润的绝大部份来自向一小部分人销售数量相对较少的车辆。具体来说，福特和通用汽车的收入主要依靠向富裕的北美人销售皮卡、SUV和跨界车。

In other words, if Americans’ appetite for trucks and S.U.V.s falters, then Ford and GM will be in real trouble. That creates a strategic quandary for them. In the coming years, these companies must cross a bridge from one business model to another: They must use their robust truck and S.U.V. earnings to subsidize their growing electric vehicle business and learn how to make E.V.s profitably. If they can make it across this bridge quickly, they will survive. But if their S.U.V. profits crumble before their E.V. business is ready, they will fall into the chasm and perish.

换而言之，如果美国人对卡车和SUV的兴趣减弱的话，福特和通用汽车将遇到真正的麻烦。这给它们带来了一种战略困境。未来几年，这些公司必须跨越从一种商业模式到另一种商业模式的桥梁：他们必须使用销售卡车和SUV的坚固收入来补贴不断增长的电动车业务，并学会如何让后者盈利。如果它们能迅速跨越这个障碍，就能生存下来。但如果来自SUV的利润在它们准备好做电动车生意之前就崩溃的话，它们将掉进深渊而毙命。

That’s why the flood of cheap Chinese electric vehicles poses such a big problem: It could wash away Ford and GM’s bridge before they have finished building it. Even a wave of competitive electric cars from the Sun Belt automakers — like Kia’s EV9, a three-row S.U.V. — could eat away at their S.U.V. profits before they’re ready.

这就是为什么来自中国的廉价电动车洪流带来的问题如此之大：这个洪流可能会在福特和通用汽车把桥建成之前将其冲垮。甚至一波来自阳光地带汽车制造商具竞争力的电动车造成的冲击（比如，起亚的三排座EV9 SUV），也可能会在福特和通用汽车做好准备之前侵蚀它们的SUV利润。

Perhaps the Big Three deserve destruction; after all, they hooked us on S.U.V.s in the first place and then fell behind in the E.V. race. But letting them die is not a tenable political option for the Biden administration. One goal of Mr. Biden’s presidency is to show not only that decarbonization can work for the American economy, but that it can revive moribund fossil-fuel-dependent communities in the Rust Belt. Mr. Biden has also fought for and won the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, which just cemented a generous new contract with the Big Three and now needs them to thrive. He has reason, in other words, to help the Big Three even before you get to the harsh electoral realities: The legacy auto industry employs more people in Michigan than any other state, and Mr. Biden’s path to re-election all but requires him to win Michigan in November. (Recall that Donald Trump won Michigan by just under 11,000 votes in 2016.) Mr. Biden cannot allow the possibility of another China shock to hit the Midwest’s auto economy. So what should he do?

也许三巨头应该被摧毁；毕竟，是它们让我们最初迷上了SUV，然后在电动车竞争上落后的。但让它们消亡对拜登政府来说不是一个可行的政治选择。拜登在总统任上的目标之一是展示脱碳的目标不仅对美国经济来说可行，而且能重振铁锈地带依赖化石燃料的濒临崩溃社区。拜登也寻求并已赢得了美国汽车工人联合会的支持，这家工会刚与三巨头签订了一份慷慨的新合同，需要它们今后能蓬勃发展。换句话说，拜登有理由帮助三巨头，即使不考虑严峻的竞选现实：在密歇根州的传统汽车行业工作的人比任何其他州的都多，而拜登要想成功赢得连任，基本上需要他在11月的大选中赢得密歇根州。（回想一下，特朗普在2016年以略低于1.1万票的优势赢得了密歇根州。）拜登不能让中国再次冲击中西部汽车经济的可能性出现。那他该怎么办呢？

The good news is that Congress has already done some of the work for him. You may have heard about the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous subsidies for domestic electric car production. Can it help here? It can, and it will, but the act alone is not nearly big enough to insulate these companies from the threat posed by Chinese E.V.s. The Chinese automaker Geely is preparing to sell the small, all-electric Volvo EX30 S.U.V. in the United States for $35,000. That price — which seemingly includes the cost of a 25 percent tariff, first imposed by the Trump administration — rivals what American automakers are capable of doing today, even with the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies.

好消息是国会已经为他做了一些工作。你也许听说过《通货膨胀削减法案》里有对国内电动车生产提供的慷慨补贴。 它能帮助三巨头吗？能，也将会，但仅靠这个法案还远不足以使这些公司免受中国电动车带来的威胁。中国汽车制造商吉利正准备以3.5万美元的价格在美国销售小型纯电沃尔沃EX30 SUV。这个价格似乎包括了特朗普政府开征的25%关税，该车的性价比完全可与美国车企如今所能做到的相竞争，即使后者把《通货膨胀削减法案》的补贴算了进来。

Subsidies likely won’t be enough; Mr. Biden will need to impose new trade restrictions. But here’s where it gets messy. The case for protecting the American auto market from Chinese E.V.s is obvious, politically essential, but also highly troublesome. In the short term, American automakers — even the homegrown electric-only carmakers like Tesla and Rivian — must be shielded from a wave of cheap cars. But in the long term, Mr. Biden must be careful not to cordon off the American car market from the rest of the world, turning the United States into an automotive backwater of bloated, expensive, gas-guzzling vehicles. The Chinese carmakers represent the first real competition that the global car industry has faced in decades, and American companies must be exposed to some of that threat — for their own good. That means they must feel the chill of death on their necks, and be forced to rise and face this challenge.

光有补贴恐怕还不够；拜登将需要采取新的贸易限制措施。但事情在这里变得复杂起来。虽然保护美国汽车市场免受中国电动车冲击的理由显而易见，政治上完全必要，但也极为棘手。短期内，美国汽车制造商——就连特斯拉和Rivian等本土纯电动车制造商在内——也需要保护，以免受到廉价汽车的冲击。但从长远来看，拜登必须小心行事，不要将美国汽车市场与世隔绝，将美国变成汽车工业落后，充斥着造价昂贵、耗油的大车型之地。中国的汽车制造商们代表了全球汽车行业几十年来面临的第一次真正竞争，美国的公司必须面对其中的部分威胁，这对它们自己有好处。这意味着它们必须感受刀架在脖子上的寒意，被迫站起来面对这一挑战。

This could be done in a number of ways. One is by suggesting to American companies that any import restrictions imposed on Chinese cars in the next few years won’t necessarily be permanent. That might encourage American companies to learn everything they can from their new Chinese competition, getting over their hubris and recognizing that Chinese companies now understand aspects of E.V. manufacturing better than their American counterparts. That means that Republican lawmakers in particular must recognize that climate-friendly technologies represent the future of global industry. Mr. Trump is threatening that, if elected, he would gut the Inflation Reduction Act, even though it’s full of policies meant to help America compete with Chinese E.V.s. There would be no faster way to destroy the U.S. car industry as a global force.

可以通过多种方式来实现这一点。其中一种是向美国公司暗示，未来几年对中国汽车采取的任何进口限制不一定是永久性的。这也许会鼓励美国公司尽量从新的中国对手那里学习一切它们能学到的东西，克服自己的傲慢，认识到中国公司现在比美国同行们更了解电动车制造的各个环节。这意味着，尤其对共和党议员来说，必须认识到气候友好型技术代表着全球工业的未来。特朗普正在威胁说，如果当选，他将废除《通货膨胀削减法案》，尽管该法案里充满了旨在帮助美国与中国电动车竞争的政策。在摧毁美国汽车工业的全球地位上，没有比这更快的途径了。

What the United States is trying to do is really hard. We want to preserve the economic geography and institutions of our old fossil-powered economy while retooling it to work in a new zero-carbon world. There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that everyone involved here — Democrats, Republicans, major automakers — resent China for achieving what was once a goal of, well, hippies and environmentalists: making electric cars popular and cheap. But if they’ve done it, we can do it too. It will take grit and good-faith effort. We should assume that Ford and General Motors will be competing with BYD and Geely for decades to come — and we should relish that fight.

美国想要做的事情确实很难。我们想保留旧的化石能源经济的经济地理和机构，同时对其进行调整，以适应新的零碳世界。一个颇具讽刺意味的事实是，参与其中的每个人——民主党人、共和党人、大型车企——都嫉恨中国实现了一个可以说曾是嬉皮士和环保主义者们的目标，即让电动车变得受欢迎和便宜。但如果中国能做到，我们也能做到。这需要勇气和真诚的努力。我们应该假设福特和通用汽车将在未来几十年与比亚迪和吉利竞争，我们应该渴望这场战斗。