‍The US claims it runs a 375-billion-US-dollar trade deficit with China, and US President Donald Trump is calling for that number to be cut by 100 billion US dollars. Experts say that the US method of trade deficit calculation is flawed, and America's strict export control should take more duties.

The real deficit number may not be as large as Trump argues, since the US method of trade deficit calculation is flawed, experts said.

"A group comprised of both Chinese and American statistics experts has concluded that the US's calculations of the trade deficit tend to overstate the actual amount by 20 percent," Dong Yan, an expert from the Institute of World Economics & Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told CGTN.

The first thing to point out is that the US calculation does not factor everything in, says Wang Jianhui, general manager of the R&D department at Capital Securities. “You cannot only look at surplus in goods. The figures related to service trades should be included, too,” he said.

Furthermore, according to the official report, while China enjoys a trade surplus, it is the US that has the profit surplus. 59 percent of that surplus came from processing trade, where China earned only a very thin margin, but the US made large profits from design, supply and sales.

Trade is not a zero-sum game, Wang stressed. From his perspective, “China has a surplus” does not mean that “the US loses out”. The overall deficit trend should be taken into account.

“If you look at the data, back in 2005-2006, the US deficit with China accounted for 20 percent of the total. Now the share jumped to about 51 percent. It sounds serious. But if you look at the total deficit itself, the US deficit in 2005-2006 was nearly 760 billion US dollars. And the number is 568 billion US dollars now. So maybe doing business with China has lowered the overall US deficit,” Wang explained.

The fundamental reason is America's strict export controls. Moreover, Trump’s administration has regarded eliminating the trade deficit as the most direct way to resolve China-US trade disputes.

In an ideal complementary trade model, each party sells what it is best at producing to maximize profits and buy what it needs in return. However in this case with China, the US has been holding back its competitive high-tech and intellectual exports.

For years China always had trouble importing such American goods as supercomputer systems, underwater facilities and telecom equipment, while the US never stopped largely importing made-in-China products.

According to the US commerce ministry, US exports to China stood at 130 billion US dollars in 2017, mainly comprised of crude oil and civil airplane engines and parts. Meanwhile, the US imported 505 billion US dollars worth of goods from China, phones, household items and computers. A US report shows that if the US eases limitations on exports to China, the trade deficit could be reduced by 35 percent.

Wang suggested that China should promote service trade. In that area, China has strong demand. “Last year, service trade deficit on China side was closed to 270 billion US dollars. And if the US could make efforts – opening up more area and technologies to China, the trade imbalance could be largely corrected,” Wang said.

(CGTN’s Wang Yue also contributed to the story.)