国外博客：关于特朗普贸易战争威胁的几点评论 [美国媒体]

Some Notes on Trump’s Trade War Threat
Posted on June 20, 2018 by Yves Smith 
The threat of Trump going from a trade spat to a full blown trade war with China has produced what Lamber would call an overly dynamic situation, so I’ll offer only a few observations. For instance, after Trump warned China that he planned to hit another $200 billion of Chinese goods with tariffs if they responded in kind to the US assigning tariffs to $50 billion of Chinese products, Trump upped the ante and said he would slap tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese exports if China didn’t back down.

标题：关于特朗普贸易战争威胁的几点评论（注记）
2018年6月20日由伊夫·史密斯发
特朗普将贸易争端升级到与中国全面爆发贸易战的威胁，已经导致了兰伯所说的过度反应的局势，所以我只提出几点看法，例如，特朗普警告中国，如果中国对美国500亿美元商品作出回应，他计划再对中国商品征收2000亿美元的关税，如果中国不让步的话，特朗普将加大赌注，并表示如果中国不让步，他将对另外2000亿美元的中国出口产品征收关税。

The trade war-mongers are in the driver’s seat. From the Wall Street Journal:
The White House’s tough stance represents the ascendancy, for now, of trade hawks in the administration, particularly White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro and U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer…
“It’s clear that China has much more to lose” than the U.S. from a trade fight, said Mr. Navarro.

以下来自“华尔街日报”《 贸易战——当商贩坐上驾驶位》一文：
白宫的强硬立场代表了贸易鹰派在政府中的优势，特别是白宫高级贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗 (Peter Navarro) 和美国贸易代表罗伯特·莱特希泽。
纳瓦罗说，“很明显，中国在一场贸易战中比美国损失更大。”

Mr. Lighthizer said additional tariffs wouldn’t be imposed until the U.S. picked the products, and received industry comment, a process that will take months and leaves open the possibility of additional negotiations. But so far there is no indication that such talks are on the horizon, and the Trump administration is signaling that it is increasingly confident of achieving goals through a dramatically more confrontational approach to China…

莱特希泽说，在美国挑选这些产品并收到业界的意见之前，不会征收额外的关税，这一过程需要几个月的时间，而且还有进一步谈判的可能性。但到目前为止，还没有迹象表明这种谈判即将到来，特朗普政府也在暗示，它越来越有信心通过对中国。。。采取更具对抗性的方式来实现目标。

Next up from the administration is a plan to halt Chinese investment in U.S. technology, due to be released by the Treasury Department by June 30….
Mr. Trump has backed away from threats before….In April, Mr. Trump threatened a dramatic increase in tariffs on Chinese goods, but didn’t follow through. Instead, he approved negotiations Mr. Mnuchin led to get China to buy more U.S. goods and make changes to its tariffs and other trade barriers. That led to a temporary reprieve in the tensions as the two sides sought to negotiate a truce.

美国政府的下一个计划是暂停中国对美国技术的投资，美国财政部将在6月30日…之前公布这一计划。
特朗普已经从…之前的威胁中退缩了。今年4月，特朗普威胁大幅提高对中国商品的关税，但没有贯彻到底。相反，他批准了罗伯特·穆钦领导的谈判，提出让中国购买更多的美国商品，并改变其关税和其他贸易壁垒，这使双方寻求谈判休战之前的紧张局势暂时缓和。

The White House has since judged those efforts a failure, especially after Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Trump were criticized by cable TV hosts and some lawmakers of being weak on China. During a June trade mission to China by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Beijing offered to buy nearly $70 billion in U.S. farm, manufacturing and energy products if the Trump administration abandoned tariff threats. Mr. Trump rejected that offer as another empty promise.

自那以来，白宫一直认为这些努力是失败的，尤其是穆钦在和特朗普受到电视主持人和一些议员批评，指其在中国问题上软弱之后。在美国商务部长罗斯6月份访华期间，北京方面提出，如果特朗普政府放弃关税威胁，北京将购买近700亿美元的美国农业、制造业和能源产品，特朗普拒绝了这一提议，并认为这是另一个空洞的承诺。

Trump’s negotiating strategy, if you can call it that, appears unlikely to work with China. If one were to try to ascribe logic to Trump picking and then escalating a fight with China, it is presumably in the end to bring them to the negotiating table. But China is not North Korea, where the US threatened the Hermit Kingdom with nuclear devastation and Kim Jong Un with being the next Gaddafi and then dialed the bluster way down as China pushed and South Korea pulled North Korea to the negotiating table. And the good luck of the Olympics being in South Korea facilitated the process.
One could argue that all of the theatrics was to enable Trump to talk with Kim Jong Un .

特朗普的谈判策略，如果可以这么说的话，基本可以等同于似乎不太可能与中国合作。 
如果一个人试图将逻辑归因于特朗普的有意选择，然后升级与中国的争端，那么最终结果可能是把他们带到谈判桌上来。但是中国并不是朝鲜，美国以核灾难威胁朝鲜，金正恩成为下一个卡扎菲，随着中国的推动和韩国把朝鲜拉到谈判桌上，而韩国利用奥运会的好运促进了这一进程，有人可能会说，所有的演戏都是为了让特朗普能够和金正恩对话。

With China, Trump’s escalation to threatening another $200 billion of Chinese goods after his initial $50 billion shot is a reaction to China going into tit for tat mode as opposed to negotiating. This should not be a surprise. The more detailed press reports were making clear that China was initially not engaging with the US (as in making clear that they weren’t receptive to US demands and accordingly weren’t deploying meaningful resources to talks).

对于中国，特朗普在他最初的500亿美元赌注之后，升级到威胁另外2000亿美元的中国商品，这是对中国进入针锋相对的模式而不是谈判的一种反应，这不应该是一个惊喜，更为详细的新闻报道明确表示，中国最初没有与美国接触( 例如中国明确表示，他们不愿接受美国的要求，因此没有为谈判调配任何有意义的资源 )。

Even if China incurs meaningful economic costs in hitting back at the US, politically it’s a no brainer. China’s sense of itself as the power that will displace the US means it’s unacceptable to be bullied. China has been bizarrely sensitive to slights, for instance, lashing out during the 2007 IPCC negotiations and getting testy when the US put countervailing duties on a mere $224 million of goods. Recall that when the US put sanctions on Russia, its strategists seemed to genuinely believe that Russians would rise up and turf Putin out. Instead, his popularity ratings rose and even the Moscow intelligentsia rallied to support him.

即使中国在反击美国时付出了经济代价，但对美国来说，从政治上看，这并不是一个明智之举，中国认为自己是取代美国的力量，这意味着被欺负是不可接受的。
例如，在2007年的IPCC（政府间气候变化委员会）谈判期间，当美国对2.24亿美元的商品征收反补贴税时，中国就变得暴躁起来。
回想一下，当美国对俄罗斯实施制裁时，美国的战略家们似乎真的相信俄罗斯人会站起来，把普京赶下台，但结果恰恰想法，他的支持率上升，甚至莫斯科的知识分子也支持他。

Oh, and while we are speaking about North Korea, Kim Jong Un is in Beijing . It’s not hard to get the message: there’s no reason for China to play nicely in the face of US trade brinksmanship.
Trump appears to be relying on the idea that since the US imports more than China exports, we can do more damage to them in a tariff game of chicken. On the one hand, as Marshall Auerback has pointed out, in trade wars, the creditor nation, which would be China, typically fares worse than the debtor nation. However, China can do a lot a damage to US companies in China. The US has long had a policy of promoting the interests of US multinationals based on the claim that deeper trade relations would reduce the odds of war and make countries more disposed towards democracy. And when “free trade” ideology got a life of its own, economists and pundits regularly treated the idea of trying to protect domestic jobs as retrograde, even when many of our trade partners negotiated their deals with that consideration in mind.

欧，对了，在我们谈论朝鲜的时候，金正恩正在北京呢，不难理解：面对美国的贸易边缘政策，中国没有理由表现得很好。
特朗普似乎依赖于这样一种观点，即既然美国的进口大于中国的出口，我们就可以在一场愚蠢的关税游戏中对他们造成更大的损害。
一方面，正如马歇尔·奥尔贝克所指出的那样，在贸易战中，债权国中国的表现一般而言比债务国差，然而，中国可能对美国在华企业造成很大损害。
长期以来，美国一直奉行促进美国跨国公司利益的政策，理由是加深贸易关系将降低战争的可能性，并使各国更倾向于民主。
当“自由贸易”思想有了它自己的生命时，经济学家和专家们经常把试图保护国内就业的想法视为倒退，即使我们的许多贸易伙伴出于这一考虑通过谈判达成了协议。

As Bloomberg points out:
American businesses from Apple Inc. and Walmart Inc. to Boeing Co. and General Motors Co. all operate in China and are keen to expand. That hands Xi room to impose penalties such as customs delays, tax audits and increased regulatory scrutiny if Trump delivers on his threat of bigger duties on Chinese trade. U.S. shares slumped Tuesday as part of a broad sell-off in global markets in response to Trump’s threat.

从苹果公司、沃尔玛到波音公司和通用汽车，美国企业都在中国。
如果特朗普兑现对中国贸易征收更高关税的威胁，中国将有空间施加惩罚，比如海关拖延、税务审计和加强监管审查。美国股市周二大跌，这是全球市场广泛抛弃特朗普威胁的一部分表现。

The total amount of U.S. goods exports to China only amounted to $130 billion last year, meaning Trump’s potential tariffs on $250 billion or more of Chinese imports can’t be matched, at least directly. But if you measure both exports and sales of U.S. companies inside China, the U.S. has a surplus of $20 billion with China, according to Deutsche Bank AG….
One advantage of this tactic for Xi is that this time the numbers are on his side, as U.S. investment in China is far larger than the reverse. American companies had $627 billion in assets and $482 billion in sales in China in 2015, compared to just $167 billion in U.S. assets and $26 billion in U.S. sales for Chinese companies….

正如彭博社所指出的：
去年美国对中国出口总额仅为1，300亿美元，这意味着特朗普对2500亿美元或更多中国进口商品征收的潜在关税无法无法与之匹配，至少直接从数字看是这样的。但如果你根据德意志银行的数据来衡量美国公司在中国的出口和销售情况，美国对华贸易存在顺差，价值约200亿美元。
对中国来说，这一策略的一个优势是，这一次的数据是站在他一边的，因为美国在中国的投资远大于中国在美国的投资。2015年，美国公司在中国的资产为6270亿美元，销售额为4820亿美元，而中国公司在美资产仅为1670亿美元，在美销售额为260亿美元。。。。

A change in trade priorities to focus on domestic employment isn’t nuts. It’s hard to know what Trump is trying to achieve as he calls for China to reduce its trade deficit by $200 billion. Given that the Administration said it will focus on the sectors depicted as priorities in China’s “Made-in-China 2025” plans in next round to tariff targets, China has good reason to think Trump’s real aim is to check its rise as a superpower.

改变贸易优先项，把重点放在国内就业上，并不是愚蠢，但很难知晓特朗普在呼吁中国削减2000亿美元的贸易赤字时到底想要实现什么。
鉴于美国政府表示，下一轮关税目标是针对“中国制造2025计划”，并将其列为重点关注领域，中国有充分理由认为，特朗普的真正目标是遏制中国作为超级大国的崛起。

Even though Trump is giving trade negotiations a bad name, there’s every reason to give domestic employment higher priority in trade negotiation. The reason Trump is so fond of tariffs is that they are a weapon he can deploy quickly and unilaterally, while negotiations and WTO cases take time. And even though the pundit class likes to decry manufacturing as oh-so-20th century, Ford’s Rouge plant employed more people than Apple does in the entire US. Restoring infrastructure would create a lot of employment, as would increasing domestic manufacturing.

尽管特朗普在贸易谈判中声名狼藉，但在贸易谈判中，他完全有理由把国内就业放在更优先的位置。
特朗普之所以如此喜欢关税，是因为关税是他可以迅速、单方面部署的武器，而谈判和世贸投诉需要时间。
尽管权威人士喜欢谴责制造业是20世纪的事，但福特的组装工厂雇佣的员工比整个美国的苹果公司都多，恢复基础设施将创造大量就业机会，增加国内制造业也是如此。

But the US has eliminated the supervisor and middle managers that once ran operations like these. If we were to seek to build some areas of manufacturing, the US would have to engage in industrial policy, which is something we do now, but only by default, with the defense industry, financial services, health care, housing, and higher education among the favored sectors. So given our political constraints, it’s hard to see how we get there from here.

但美国已经淘汰了曾经经营此类业务的主管和中层管理人员，如果我们想要建立一些制造类行业，美国将不得不实施工业政策，这是我们现在所做的，但只是在默认情况下，将国防工业、金融服务、医疗保健、住房和高等教育列为最受青睐的领域，因此，鉴于我们的政治限制，很难看出我们如何能做到这一点。

Mr. Market is anxious. Anxious is well short of panicked. Chinese stocks took the worst hit, but the latest round of threats took 4% off the Shanghai composite, taking it back to its level of 20 months ago. Chinese indexes were mixed today. By contrast, the Dow was down 1.15% and the S&P 500, 0.4%.

市场很焦虑，焦虑不安但远没有惊慌失措，中国股市遭受了最严重的打击，最新一轮的威胁使上证综指下跌了4%，回到了20个月前的水平，今天，中国的指数涨跌互现，相比之下，道琼斯指数下跌1.15%，标准普尔500指数下跌0.4%。

Having said that, the Fed is in a tightening cycle and stock valuations already looked pretty attenuated. Trade tensions and the uncertainty over how the threat to global supply chains will play out may lead investors to curb their enthusiasm, particularly if the Trump initiative starts looking less like another fit of pique and more like a change in the rules of the game that looks unlikely to work out well.

尽管如此，美联储正处于一个紧缩周期，股价已经相当疲软，贸易紧张局势以及全球供应链面临的威胁将如何演变的不确定性，可能导致投资者抑制自己的热情，尤其是如果特朗普的倡议开始看上去不再像一种愤怒，而更像是游戏规则的改变，而且这种改变似乎不太可能奏效。

 

PlutoniumKun
June 20, 2018 at 3:57 am
I think the Chinese response depends on the great unknown of the Chinese Communist Parties long term strategy. One line of thought is that the ‘Asian model’ of trade surpluses is for them just the means to an end for China to reach ‘high development’ status, from which point they would seek a much more balanced internal economy. The other, sees Chinas trade surplus – in particular the deliberate over production of strategic products such as microprocessors and pharmaceuticals as an end itself – warfare by means of trade. Both aspects are variations on the Japanese Yoshida Doctrine, something the Chinese have studied in detail.
If the former, then its entirely possible that the Chinese see Trump’s threat not as a challenge, but an opportunity to carry out the necessary deep structural changes to balance their economy. A populist trade war would be the cover the government needs to dramatically cut over-production and focus instead on ensuring China has all the strategic products it needs (the most crucial of course is food). The CCP’s fear is always inflation in food prices – this is historically the trigger for urban unrest, as in the 1980’s. But if they have a foreign scapegoat for that, they may see it as a risk worth taking. Urban riots where people attack CCP buildings terrifies the leadership. Urban riots where people burn Trump effigies, less so.

我认为，中国的回应取决于中国共产党长期战略的巨大未知性。一种观点认为，“亚洲模式”的贸易顺差正是中国达到“高度发展”地位的手段，从这一点上，他们将寻求一个更为平衡的内部经济。另一种观点认为，中国的贸易顺差——尤其是蓄意过度生产微处理器和药品等战略产品，以此作为最终目标——是通过贸易手段进行战争，这两种都是日本吉田主义的变体，中国人已经对此进行了详细的研究。

如果是前者，那么中国人完全有可能把特朗普的威胁视为一次机会，是进行必要的深层次结构改革以平衡经济的机会，而不是挑战。一场民粹主义贸易战将成为政府大幅削减生产过剩、专注于确保中国拥有所需战略产品( 当然最关键的是粮食 ) 的掩护。中国共产党的担忧始终是食品价格的通胀：这在历史上是引发城市动荡的导火索，就像上世纪80年代那样，但如果他们有一个外国替罪羊，他们可能会认为这是一个值得冒的风险，城市骚乱中人们袭击中共大楼的让领导层感到害怕，而在城市骚乱中，人们焚烧特朗普的肖像，恐惧感就少多了。

If the true strategy is the second, then Trumps attacks are an obvious threat. The Chinese are aware now of the growing awareness in the US of just how vulnerable the US has become to shortages of products which are now almost entirely Chinese made or controlled – many processed metals, pharmaceuticals, key electronic components, etc. If it is indeed Chinese strategy to use these for leverage at some future date, then they won’t want to risk undermining this in a tit for tat war. In this situation, they will tread much more carefully.
In a broader sense, Trump believes that the biggest stick always wins a war like this, and he and his advisor clearly believe the US has the biggest stick. But in military terms, the winner in a war is not the country who has the biggest army, but the country that can bring the biggest army to the right field of battle. The Chinese (along perhaps with the Europeans and Mexicans) may believe that if they fight smart and focus on specific battles – such as US farm goods or key US aerospace and consumer electronics companies – they can make Trump and the Republicans really hurt. They know the electoral cycle in the US, which gives them a big advantage. It will be interesting to see if Trump forces all sorts of new and unlikely alliances in opposition.

如果真正的策略是第二个，那么特朗普的攻击就是一个明显的威胁。 中国现在意识到，美国已经发现自己变得多么容易受到产品短缺的影响，目前，这些产品几乎全部由中国制造或控制——比如许多加工金属、制药、关键电子元器件等。 如果中国在未来某个时候使用这些作为筹码确实是中国的策略，那么他们就不会冒险在一场针锋相对的战争中破坏这一点，在这种情况下，他们会更加小心谨慎。
在更广泛的意义上，特朗普认为，棒子更大总是能赢得这样的战争，他和他的顾问显然相信美国拥有最大的棒子。
但在军事方面，战争中的胜者不是拥有最大军队的国家，而是能把最强大的军队带到正确战场的国家。 中国人( 或许还有欧洲人和墨西哥人 ) 可能认为，如果他们精明地作战，专注于特定的战斗——比如美国农产品或航空航天以及消费电子产品公司——他们就能让特朗普和共和党人受到真正的伤害，他们知道美国的选举周期，这给他们带来了巨大的优势，看看特朗普是否会迫使各种新的、不太可能的联盟出现在反对派中，这将是一件有趣的事情。

Loneprotester
June 20, 2018 at 6:58 am
Interesting analysis. Do you think Trump’s aim could be to throw a spanner into their works, whatever the plan is, thereby buying more time to re-industrialize and wean US industries off of China? Also, it strikes me that Trump is consciously disciplining US-based businesses like Apple every bit as much as he is China.

有趣的分析。你认为特朗普的目标会不会是让他们的计划受到干扰，从而争取更多的时间来重新工业化和摆脱美国工业对中国的依赖？此外，让我印象深刻的是，特朗普有意识地对苹果等总部位于美国的企业进行处分，就像他是中国一样。

Left in Wisconsin
June 20, 2018 at 1:35 pm
It would also require companies like Apple to show some interest in U.S. manufacturing, which is not the case at this time.
I’m all for whatever barriers are necessary to re-invigorate and modernize U.S. manufacturing. But it will be impossible to make progress if U.S. multi-nationals refuse to go along. Trump doesn’t play the long game and there is really no evidence that he is willing to challenge/threaten U.S. firms in substantive ways. Remember the campaign threats against Ford? Since then, Ford has not upped its U.S. investment but instead chosen to get completely out of the small car business. And that is a company that still has an extensive U.S. manufacturing presence, unlike, say, Apple.
I think this is what the Chinese understand (maybe Trump does too ). They can play hardball with Trump as long as US MNC’s are on the side of China against the U.S. In the last 6 months, have you heard a single large U.S. manufacturer voice support for Trump’s trade policies? I haven’t.

它还要求像苹果这样的公司对美国制造业表现出一定的兴趣，而目前的情况并非如此。

我完全支持（对中国）设置任何必要的障碍，以振兴和现代化美国制造业，但是，如果美国跨国公司拒绝合作，就不可能取得进展。特朗普并不是在玩长线游戏，也没有证据表明他愿意以实质性的方式挑战/威胁美国公司。还记得他竞选时对福特的威胁吗？自那以后，福特没有增加在美国的投资，而是选择完全退出小型汽车业务，这是一家仍在美国拥有广泛制造业务的公司，与苹果等公司不同。

我想这就是中国人所理解的 ( 也许特朗普也这么认为) ，只要美国跨国公司站在中国一边反对美国，他们就可以对特朗普采取强硬态度，在过去6个月里，你有没有听到任何一家美国大型制造商对特朗普的贸易政策表示支持？反正我没有。

MyLessThanPrimeBeef
June 20, 2018 at 10:02 am
If the Chinese focus on key areas that can ‘make Trump and the Republicans really hurt. They know the electoral cycle in the US…,’ wouldn’t that be outright election meddling?

如果中国把重点放在那些可能“ 让特朗普和共和党人受到伤害的关键领域，他们知道美国…的选举周期”，这难道不是等同于直接干预选举吗？

Clive
June 20, 2018 at 4:16 am
There is the same logic, possibility, at work in Trump’s thinking (and thinking may be too generous a term for it but we do I suppose have to assign some sort of plan being pushed through here) to that of the U.K.’s Brexit Ultras.
For the Ultras, reestablishing political and sovereignty independence is conflated and intertwined with economic independence which all — through a mechanism which is never adequately explained — will result in domestic economic revitalisation that doesn’t require government direct intervention.
No, it doesn’t stack up or make a great deal of sense, but having been around many hard-core Brexit’eers in the Brexit heartland (and the Conservative party’s local association in a Brexit stronghold) the people who hold this worldview do make it work within the confines of their own minds. It goes something like: if you neutralise or at least weaken the power blocks which are winning out politically and you’ll reap a reward economically. The fallacy assumes that you can give Johnny Foreigner a good kicking at the sovereignty and international power-broker level and because you’re a geopolitical shaker and mover, that’ll pay off in trade terms. All without consequences.
But of course there are always consequences. Other countries can decide to endure downsides (not least because the various ruling elites don’t end up on the receiving end of these, usually) — this was the same gamble the U.K. government made, unsuccessfully, with the EU (“we’re in the unassailable position because we import from them more than we export”). And so also with China. If Beijing is prepared to play a long game, it can tough it out with the US, potentially longer than the US is prepared to tolerate.

在特朗普的思维中与英国退欧的极端性有着同样的逻辑和可能(  “ 思维”对川普来说可能是一个过于慷慨的术语，但我们还是可以假设确有某种计划在推进 )。
其极端性表现在，将重建政治和主权独立与经济独立混为一谈，并与经济独立交织在一起，认为经济独立——通过一种从未得到充分解释的机制——将导致国内经济复苏，而不需要政府直接干预。

不，这说不通，也没有多大意义，但在英国退欧的大本营( 以及保守党在英国退欧据点的地方协会 ) 有过许多核心的脱欧人士，持有这种世界观的人确实让它在他们自己的思维范围内发挥作用。它是这样的：如果你中和或至少削弱正在赢得政治胜利的权力障碍，你将从经济上获得回报，这一谬论假设，你可以在主权和国际权力掮客层面上给对手一个很好的打击，而且因为你是地缘政治的振动者和推动者，这将在贸易条件下得到回报，不会有任何后果。

但显然，现实生活中总会有后果的。其他国家可以决定承受不利的一面( 尤其是因为各种统治精英通常不会最终被接受)——这和英国政府与欧盟的赌博是一样的，但没有成功 (“我们处于无懈可击的地位，因为我们从他们那里进口的比我们出口的更多”) ，中国也是如此，如果中国政府准备打一场持久战，它可能会硬挺过去，时间可能比美国准备容忍的时间更长。

John B
June 20, 2018 at 4:57 am
There are different power centers operating in the Trump administration’s trade policy. Trump himself may be motivated by no more than a desire to appear tough — and as Yves notes, tariffs are one of the few ways a US president can act swiftly and unilaterally to do so.
His advisers are another matter. They would like to pressure China to have more open and fair policies, but are OK with the consequences if China refuses — i.e., an extremely large decrease in US trade volumes with China, and, indeed, the entire world. They have probably performed a calculation similar to the one outlined by Paul Krugman in his June 17 column on trade wars. Basically, a global trade war would not have a giant impact on global GDP — perhaps 2-3 percent assuming tariffs on everything in the neighborhood of 30 percent. There would be displacement of jobs and workers while everyone readjusted, but that’s a price the Trump administration would probably be willing to pay. And, what Krugman does not mention, the United States as a very large economy would in fact do less badly in a trade war than most others countries. By losing less, it would “win” in the zero-sum universe Trump seems to inhabit.
That’s a difference between Trumpers and Brexiters. Britain is an island that has always depended on trade. The US has two oceans around it, still the world’s largest economy (more or less), adequate natural resources, and a whole hemisphere to pick on.

特朗普政府的贸易政策中有着不同的权力中心。特朗普本人的动机可能仅仅是希望表现得强硬——正如伊夫（译注：本文作者）指出的那样，关税是美国总统能够迅速、单方面采取行动的少数几种方式之一。

他的顾问是另一回事。他们想向中国施压，要求中国采取更开放、更公平的政策，但如果中国拒绝的话，他们会接受后果——即美国对中国，乃至对整个世界的贸易量大幅下降。他们可能进行了类似于保罗·克鲁格曼在6月17日关于贸易战的专栏文章中概述的计算，基本上，一场全球贸易战不会对全球GDP产生巨大影响——假设对所有东西征收30%左右的关税，或许影响是2-3%左右，当各方都进行调整时，工作岗位和工人将被转移，但这可能是特朗普政府愿意付出的代价。而且，克鲁格曼没有提到的是，美国作为一个非常大的经济体，实际上在贸易战中的表现要比其他大多数国家要好，通过减少损失，它将在特朗普疑似居住的“ 零和宇宙”中“获胜”。

英国是一个一直依赖贸易的岛屿，美国周围有两个海洋，仍然是世界上最大的经济体( 或多或少 )，有充足的自然资源，以及一个可资利用的整个半球，这是特朗普支持者和退欧支持者之间一个重大区别。

PlutoniumKun
June 20, 2018 at 7:17 am
I think you are right in suggesting that the calculation is that even an all out trade war would not be catastrophic, and the US would come out best.
I think the problem with this thinking is that it assumes symmetric actions by all the major parties, but in this sort of trade war it will be more targeted and asymmetric. By which I mean that the Chinese and Europeans in particular have immediately targetted more obvious, vulnerable US sectors. At first, these are just rather obvious ones, like Harley Davidson bikes or Levi Jeans, but its not hard to see that if it gets serious there might be co-operation to target what they see as Trumps heartlands. As I suggested above, a targeted attempt to hit key US food exports at the strategically right time could be devastating for US farmers, and domestically China and other countries may accept the ‘hit’ domestically as they have a convenient scapegoat.
I should say though that whatever the outcome, the uncertainty created by Trumps action is likely to make all investors much more wary of businesses which depend on widespread global supply chain networks, which can only be a good thing for people trying to keep jobs local and to reduce emissions. Its unfortunate that when these come about through trade wars the impacts (as usual) will hit ordinary people first, at least in the initial stage.

我认为，你所提出的计算方式是正确的，即使是一场全面的贸易战也不会造成灾难性的后果，而且美国的表现会最好。
但我认为这种想法的问题在于，它假定所有主要政党都采取统一行动，但在这种贸易战中，它将更具针对性和不对称性。 我的意思是，尤其是中国和欧洲，它们会立刻对美国更明显、更脆弱的部门下手。 起初，针对的只是相当明显的一些企业或产品，如哈雷摩托或李维斯牛仔裤，但不难看出，如果事态严重，可能会有人合作，将目标对准他们眼中的特朗普心脏地带， 正如我上面提到的，在战略上选择正确的时间有针对性地打击美国主要食品出口的尝试，可能会对美国农民造成毁灭性打击，而中国国内和其它国家可能会接受这种对美国国内的"打击"，因为他们有一个方便的替罪羊。

我想说，无论结果如何，特朗普行动带来的不确定性可能会让所有的投资者对依赖于广泛的全球供应链网络的企业更加警惕，这对于那些试图保持就业地方化和减少排放的人来说，是一件好事，但不幸的是，当这些通过贸易战争发生时，影响( 像往常一样 ) 将首先作用于普通人，至少在最初阶段是这样。

The Rev Kev
June 20, 2018 at 5:31 am
An overly dynamic situation is one thing so long as it does not end up in a ‘kinetic’ situation. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Trump’s threats against China are a gamble but will have to explain it a bit. For about two decades after the collapse of the USSR we lived in a unipolar world with the axis located in Washington DC. You had people like McCain, Rubio, Navarro, Lighthizer and Graham working through their careers in this ‘golden age’ but those times are now definitely over. The world is once more reverting to its normal state of a multipolar world and people like the aforementioned people cannot tolerate this.
To push back against this reversion, they have been trying on a wide front to use American military and economic power to make countries bend to their will. Threatening allies if they purchase Russian weapons, blackmailing the EU to abandon Iran in preparation for a cruel embargo, threatening Turkey by withholding sales of the F35 fighter, etc. have all been tried. For several reasons, this approach is not working so well anymore. So at this point, after wrestling some time with countries like Russia and Iran, the US has decided that they need to attack the center of gravity in this new multipolar world and that means China.

一个过度活跃的情况是另一回事，只要它不以“动态”的状态结束。我打算在这里冒险说一句，特朗普对中国的威胁是一场赌博，但有必要要解释一下，在苏联解体后大约20年里，我们生活在一个中心位于华盛顿特区的单极世界里， 在这个“ 黄金时代 ”，有麦凯恩、卢比奥、纳瓦罗、雷萨泽和格雷厄姆这样的人从事职业生涯，但现在绝对结束了，世界再次回到了多极世界的正常状态，但像上述人一样的人不能容忍这种情况的发生。

为了反击这种逆转，他们一直在努力利用美国军事和经济力量来使各国屈从于他们的意愿。威胁盟友禁止他们购买俄罗斯武器，勒索欧盟放弃伊朗，准备实施残酷的禁运，威胁土耳其停止对其销售 F35战斗机等等，出于各种原因，这种方法已经不再那么好使了，因此，在与俄罗斯和伊朗等国进行了一段时间的斗争之后，美国决定攻击这个多极世界中重心——也就是中国。

The US demanded that China reconfigure their entire economy to enable US corporations to have more power and say in China while demanding that China curtail their advancing their technological development program. China balked at this but did offer compromises to no effect. With the lunatic policy of pushing China and Russia together, a massive political and economic federation is slowly forming on the mass of lands from Vladivosok all the way through to Europe. If that happens, then the US definitely becomes a second rate power. The clock is ticking on this development hence the attempt to cower China which is the linchpin for this.
Trump has been convinced that the US holds the upper hand and decided on a gamble, a doubling down if you will, so that a decisive victory will be achieved on the cusp of the 2018 US midterm elections. The trouble with all this is that the US is hemorrhaging both soft and hard power and is in a weaker position now. There is more and more countries seeking to bypass use of the US dollar as being too dangerous to use for some countries and working with an American company and buying America products is also being seen as risky. An example is when the US forbid Airbus selling its own aircraft to Iran due to the presence of US parts. I am willing to bet that a lot of other companies sat up and took notice of this. So now for Trump he is going all in to try to overturn these developments .

美国要求中国重新配置整个经济，使美国企业能够拥有更多权力并在中国拥有发言权，同时要求中国限制其技术发展计划的推进。
中国拒绝接受，但确有做出妥协，却没有任何效果。随着中国和俄罗斯共同推动的疯狂联合政策，一个庞大的政治和经济联盟正慢慢地从符拉迪沃斯托克一直延伸到欧洲的土地上形成，如果发生这种情况，那么美国肯定会成为一个二流的强国，这一发展的时钟正在滴答作响，因此试图令中国退缩则是其中的关键。

特朗普坚信，美国占据上风，决定赌一把，如果你愿意，将双倍下注，以便在2018美国中期选举的关键阶段取得决定性胜利，所有这些都是因为美国的软实力和硬实力正在大幅下降，越来越多的国家试图绕过美元，因为对某些国家来说，使用美元过于危险，而且与美国公司合作，并买美国产品也被视为风险，例如，美国禁止空客向伊朗出售自己的飞机，原因是美国零部件存在，我敢打赌，许多其他公司都会站起来，且注意到了这一点，所以现在特朗普他正在努力推翻这一事态的发展。

phichibe
June 22, 2018 at 3:19 pm
I’m not an international trade economist so take everything I say here with a large grain of sodium chloride.
That said, I have been a keen student of the global economy since the mid 1970s, and in particular lived through nearly two decades in Silicon Valley, where in the 1980s we were all terrified of the Japanese “5th Generation” computer project and their announced intent of doing to our computer hardware and software companies what they had done so successfully since the 1950s where they started by targeting the steel industry, then the ship building industry, and finally auto manufacturing. We fully believed that we could be next. In fact, it is not at all clear why the Japanese effort failed, although some possible explanations is that they had poor market timing, that they sought initially to dominate DRAM production just as a huge glut of capacity became evident, that their focus was too-mainframe centric a la IBM, and/or that their computer companies were casualties of the financial crash that hit the Japanese economy starting in 1989 when the Nikkei was at 42,000. Since all the computer companies were parts of larger keiretsus, and these were built around the great Japanese banks that suddenly found themselves overexposed, it simply be that the Japanese computer initiatives of the 80s fell because they ran out of capital.

首先声明，我不是国际贸易经济学家，所以把我在这里说的每一句话都不一定完全正确。
话虽如此，自上世纪70年代中期以来，我一直热衷于研究全球经济，并在硅谷生活了近20年。
上世纪80年代，我们都对日本的“ 第五代 ”计算机项目感到恐惧，害怕他们如上世纪50年代以来所做的成功之举一般，对我们的计算机硬件和软件公司造成严重打击，首先是钢铁工业，然后是造船工业，最后是汽车制造业，我们完全相信我们这个行业（计算机）也会成为下一个。

事实上，目前还不清楚日本的努力为什么会失败，尽管一些可能的解释是，他们的市场时机不佳，他们最初试图在产能出现巨大过剩之际主导DRAM（动态随机存取存储器）生产，他们的重点过于集中于大型机——以大型机为中心的IBM公司是1989年日本经济遭受金融危机打击的受害者，当时日经指数为4.2万，由于它们所有的计算机公司都是规模更大的企业集团（财阀）的一部分，而且它们都是围绕风险过高的日本大银行而建立的，因此，80年代日本的计算机项目之所以失败，仅仅是因为它们耗尽了资本。

What’s clear is that the Chinese have been following the Japanese/Korean development model, namely by becoming an export-driven powerhouse. Something like 80% of Chinese production is for export. THe U.S. is, I believe, just the opposite. We are a much more autarkic (self-contained) economy. Even the vaunted “Belt and Road” project appears to my cynical eyes as a white elephant in the offing, and I think the Chinese launched it as a way of delaying the day of reckoning they are facing with respect to the *major* levels of overcapacity they have in cement, steel, and other heavy industry sectors. The statistics of Chinese over capacity in these are mindboggling – I can’t quote them here but I recall reading that it exceeds the total capacity in these industries in all the EU nations combined. Rather than reduce capacity and lay off millions of workers (as well as force the lenders to these entities to write down any loans to them made in the last decade), Xi opted to punt the ball down the road (and the belt ;-) Like Erdogan in Turkey, who the NY Times wrote in an article yesterday has been constructing giant building projects that have little prospect of generating revenue to pay for themselves, I think Xi and the communists are postponing a day of reckoning that when it comes may be brutal.

很明显，中国一直在遵循日韩发展模式，即成为出口驱动型强国，大约80% 的中国产品是出口产品，而我认为，美国的情况恰恰相反，我们是一个更加自给自足的经济体。 即便是那些被吹嘘的的"一带一路"项目，在我愤世嫉俗的眼中，也像是一只昂贵无用的白象，我认为中国人发起这个项目，是为了推迟水泥、钢铁和其它重工业行业产能严重过剩的那一天的到来。 中国在这些领域的产能统计数据令人难以置信——我不能在这里引用这些数据，但我记得，它超过了所有欧盟国家这些行业的总体产能。 XI没有削减产能，解雇数以百万计的工人，而是选择把球踢到“一带一路”这个项目上——这样的选择就像土耳其的埃尔多安一样，《纽约时报》昨天在一篇文章中写道，他一直在建造巨大的建设项目，这些项目几乎没有创造收入的前景，我认为XI和共产党正在试图推迟清算的那一天的到来，当它到来的时候可能是残酷的。

I think, best case, the Chinese are facing a Japanese-level reckoning and that they will have decades of no-growth. The Japanese “miracle” that ran from the early 1950s to the late 1980s seemed unstoppable, and the Japanese absolutely believed they had invented a new form of Asian capitalism, one that by virtue of the keiretsu structure insulating its companies from too much market discipline these were able to avoid the “quarter-to-quarter” short term planning horizons that were deemed to be crippling American corporations, particularly in the wake of the Drexel-funded greenmailers like Boesky, Perleman, and Icahn who put great pressure on U.S. companies to keep their stock prices up. I recall reading a long interview in the Economist with Lee Kuan Yew a few years before the Asian crisis of 1997, where he went on at length about what he called “Confuscian Capitalism”, an autocratic model of both commerce and governance that was essentially one-party “democracy” with a veneer of limited civil rights, and a very mercantalist/dirigiste economic development model a la the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the government planning entity that had for three decades led Japan’s industrial policy and guided its success in steel, ships, and autos.

我认为，最好的情况是，中国人正面临着日本式的清算，他们将有几十年没有增长。
从20世纪50年代初到80年代末，日本的“奇迹”似乎势不可挡，日本人绝对相信，他们发明了一种新的亚洲资本主义形式，凭借这种结构，使其企业免受过多市场纪律的影响，从而避免了“季度到季度”的短期规划视野，而这在当时被认为是美国企业的致命伤，尤其是在那之后，德雷克塞尔资助的绿票讹诈者（译注：GreenMailer，指单个或一组投资者大量购买目标公司的股票），如博斯基、珀尔曼和伊坎，他们对美国公司施加了巨大压力，要求他们保持股价上涨。

我记得在1997年亚洲金融危机的几年前，我在“经济学人”杂志上读到了一篇李光耀的长篇专访，他在采访中详细讲述了他所称的“儒家资本主义”，这是一种商业和治理的专制模式，表面上是有限的公民权，实质上是一党式“民主”，还有一种非常重商主义/注重国家干预的经济发展模式。30年来，日本国际贸易和工业部这一政府规划部门领导了日本的产业政策，并指导了日本在钢铁、船舶和汽车方面的成功。

The echoes of Japan’s 5th Generation project (itself only one of more than a dozen similar initiatives aimed to gain for the Japanese the technological high ground of the 1990s and beyond) with China’s 2025 Initiative are startling. The Chinese may in fact succeed where the Japanese failed. I can’t say for sure, not least because it’s unclear to me or to any economic writer whom I respect why the Japanese efforts failed (see what I wrote above). The Chinese have huge cash reserves, and this may be guiding their strategy going forward, that they can keep their economy going even if exports slump due to Trump’s tariffs; what is ominous is that Japan had huge cash reserves by the late 80s, and while these may have prevented their economy from slumping into a true depression, they haven’t been enough to restart the Japanese economy in the nearly 30 years since. I have a suspicion (and only that, no firm belief) that China is in fact substantially more vulnerable to any economic decline than Japan was in the late 80s. My suspicion is based on two certainties: first, China has a massively unbalanced economy, unbalanced between domestic consumption levels and the levels of industrial production, meaning China *has* to export or its domestic industries will wither; and China is sitting on massive excess capacity already, setting the stage for enormous pain either in the form of Andrew Mellon-type liquidation (unlikely due to fear of domestic unrest) or a deflationary death spiral among the producers. The second reason I think China may be a house of cards is that nobody, not even the Chinese government, has accurate statistics of production, consumption, debt, and lending. In short, China has for decades created a cauldron of potential disaster because the official statistics are “gamed” by the Communist Party bureaucrats all the up the line, from the village boss to the Ministers of Finance, Industry, etc. I recall when the Chinese government prosecuted a South China Morning Post reporter about 15 years ago for reporting economic statistics that he’d obtained from a minor bureaucrat in the city of Wuhan, IIRC. I think the government was sending a message to both its own bureaucrats and to reporters, foreign and domestic, that even the most mundane economic statistics were state secrets and no breach in the cloak of silence would be tolerated. As a result, no one in China, not even Xi, knows where the the bodies are buried, where the Chinese “Lehman Brothers” are lurking.

日本的第五代项目( 其本身只是十多项旨在为日本赢得上世纪90年代及以后的技术制高点的类似项目之一 ) 与中国的2025年计划有着惊人的相似之处，事实上，中国人可能会在日本失败的地方取得成功，我不能肯定地这么说，尤其是在我或我尊敬的任何一位经济学家都不清楚日本的努力为什么会失败的情况下( 见上文所述 )。

中国拥有庞大的现金储备，这或许正指导着他们的战略向前推进，即使出口因特朗普的关税而大幅下滑，他们也能保持经济持续增长；不祥的是，日本在上世纪80年代末同样拥有巨额现金储备，尽管这些储备或许阻止了他们的经济陷入真正的萧条，但在此后的近30年里，他们还不足以重启日本经济。

我怀疑 ( 仅此而已，不是特别坚定 ) 中国实际上比80年代末的日本更容易受到经济衰退的影响。
我的怀疑基于两个确定性：

第一，中国经济严重失衡，国内消费水平与工业生产水平不平衡，这意味着中国必须出口，否则其国内产业将萎缩；中国已经坐拥巨大的产能过剩，这会造成巨大痛苦，要么是安德鲁 · 梅隆式的清算( 但不太可能是因为担心国内不稳定)，要么是生产者陷入通货紧缩的死亡螺旋。
第二个原因，我认为中国可能是一个纸牌屋，因为没有人，甚至中国政府也没有准确的生产，消费，债务和贷款的统计数字。简言之，几十年来，中国一直在制造一堆潜在的灾难，因为官方统计数据一直被共产党官僚随意“玩弄”，从村长到财政、工业等部长，不一而足。我记得大约15年前，中国政府起诉南华早报一名记者，原因是他报道了武汉一名小官僚提供的经济统计数据，我认为，中国政府是在向自己的官僚和国内外记者发出一个信号：即使是最普通的经济统计数据也是国家机密，绝不会容忍打破沉默的做法，因此，中国没有人知道，甚至XI也不知道隐患藏在何处，中国的“雷曼兄弟”都潜伏了起来。

All this brings me back to the incipient trade war. I think Navarro and Lighthausser (sp?) believe that China is the next Japan, that it has a “glass jaw” and that the U.S. can trigger China’s “Japan moment”. What I fear is that they may be right, but that they are ignoring a huge difference between Japan 1989 and China 2018, namely that Japan since the end of WWII has forsworn any military ambitions and geographic expansionism, while China has been doing exactly the opposite, especially in the last decade. The “Nine Dash” controversy makes clear that we are dealing with a China that is much more like Japan circa 1934 than Japan 1989. If China starts to stumble economically I fear that its leaders will resort to the time-worn option of autocrats from Mussolini onward, namely focus on the external enemy and military confrontation.
It’s worth remembering that the triggering event of the Japanese attacks of December 1941 on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies was the American embargo on exports to Japan, starting with scrap iron but expanding to include oil exports in July of 1941 after the Japanese invaded Southern Vietnam. Autocratic nations facing economic crisis seldom accept their decline meekly but rather lash out. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

所有这一切使我回到了刚开始的贸易战。我认为纳瓦罗和莱特瑟相信中国是下一个日本，它有一个“玻璃下巴”，美国可以触发中国的“日本时刻”。
我担心的是，他们可能是对的，但他们忽视了1989年日本和2018年中国之间的巨大差异，即自二战结束以来，日本已经放弃了任何军事野心和地理扩张，而中国一直在做相反的事情，特别是在过去十年里，“九段线”之争清楚地表明，与1989年的日本相比，我们所面对的中国，更像是1934年左右的日本。

如果中国在经济上开始步履蹒跚，我担心中国领导人会采取墨索里尼时代的独裁者的老办法，即集中精力对付外部敌人和军事对抗。
值得记住的是，1941年12月日本对珍珠港、菲律宾、新加坡和马来亚以及荷兰东印度群岛发动袭击的导火索是美国对日本的出口禁运，首先是废铁，但在1941年7月日本入侵越南南部后扩大到包括石油出口在内的各种资源，面对经济危机的独裁国家很少顺从地接受自己的衰落，而是暴走对抗。
系好安全带，这将是一次颠簸的旅程。

译注：这么说吧，以上翻译的评论基本来源于美国所谓的高级精英，虽然未必是最高段位，但一般都是长期浸淫于金融、经济、政治和权力相关话题的老油条，动辄长篇大论，大家觉得美利坚的精英们观点怎么样？