特朗普并没有扼杀旧的贸易秩序，但他试图建立的又是什么样贸易秩序呢？ [美国媒体]

Trump Didn't Kill the Old Trade Order, but What Kind Is He Trying to Build?

特朗普并没有扼杀旧的贸易秩序，但他试图建立的又是什么样的贸易秩序呢？

The current global trade order isn't the same one was built after World War II and it is dangerous when critics forget that.
by Milton Ezrati

当前的全球贸易秩序与二战后建立的不一样，当批评者忘记这一点，是有些危险的。
作者：米尔顿·埃兹拉蒂

 

Image: Vice President Mike Pence laughs as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a baseball bat as they attend a Made in America product showcase event at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 17, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

图片：2017年7月17日，在美国华盛顿白宫，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普出席举行的美国制造产品展示活动时手持棒球棒，副总统迈克·彭斯看着笑了。路透社/卡洛斯·巴里亚

Trump draws accusations from the left, right, center, business advocates, and socialists alike. Many are justified. When, however, accusers lack historical perspective and use sloppy language, they do neither their arguments nor their audience any good. On the contrary, they create confusion and arm Trump. This failing appears in abundance in the ongoing debate over trade and tariffs.   There can be little doubt that Trump is playing with fire by imposing tariffs and tempting a trade war. Without a quick resolution to this game of threats and counter-threats, the world’s economy will travel down a path that leads to recession or worse. Even so, it is preposterous to accuse Trump, as much of the media and many of this country’s trading partners have, of “upending the global trade order built by the U.S.,” to use the words of a recent New York Times headline. The order for which America’s trading partners pretend to pine died decades ago, killed by the Bushes, the Clintons, the European Union (EU), and others. Even Trump cannot kill what has already died.

特朗普受到左派、右派、中间派、商业倡导者和类社会主义者的指责，有不少都是合理的。然而，指责者缺乏历史视角，用语又很草率，他们既没有提出论点，也没有给受众带来任何益处。相反，他们制造了混乱，而且还助使特朗普有备无患。这一败举在正进行的关于贸易和关税的辩论中大量验证。毫无疑问，特朗普是在玩火，大征关税还引发贸易战。如果不迅速解决这场威胁和反威胁的游戏，世界经济将走上一条导致衰退抑或更糟的道路。即便如此，就像许多媒体和美国的许多贸易伙伴所言一样，用《纽约时报》最近一篇头条新闻的话说就是：指责特朗普“颠覆了美国建立的全球贸易秩序”是荒谬的。这一秩序早在几十年前就已经被布什们、克林顿们、欧盟和其他国家给颠覆了，美国的那些贸易伙伴还假装为之悲哀。那怕是特朗普也无法干掉已经逝去的东西。

The original free-trade order, built assiduously by the United States in the decades following the World War II and seemingly the stuff of nostalgia at the New York Times and elsewhere, bears no resemblance to the trade order that has dominated for the last thirty-some years. The old order sought open trade universally throughout the international community. It actively eschewed the more recent practice of establishing exclusive trading blocs like NAFTA and the now-failed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). These sorts of arrangements, what trade economists refer to as preferential trade agreements (PTAs), use the language of free trade but are the farthest thing from universal. They impose barriers on all but the signatories, and often more stringent than existed prior to their formation.

最初的自由贸易秩序，是美国在第二次世界大战后的几十年里孜孜不倦地建立起来的，似乎正是《纽约时报》和其他媒体所怀念的那种东西，这与过去30多年来主导的贸易秩序没有任何相似之处。旧秩序所寻求的是在整个国际社会普遍开放贸易。其积极避免如最近建立的北美自由贸易协定以及现在已经失败的跨太平洋伙伴关系协定（TPP），这样的专属贸易集团的做法。这种安排，贸易经济学家称之为特惠贸易协定（PTAs），虽然用语说的是自由贸易，却是最没有普遍性的东西。它们对除签署方之外的所有人都设置了障碍，而且障碍往往比协定成立之前更加严格。

Washington’s original commitment to a universal approach emerged even as World War II raged. No doubt the drive stemmed from the ugly experiences with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the 1930s, which some economists claim caused the Great Depression and all agree contributed greatly to its depth and duration. As early as 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt attached to the lend-lease agreement to support Britain a provision that any recipient of such aid must cooperate with the United States to create a liberal, open, post-war world economic system. The Atlantic Charter, signed with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1941, included similar language. In 1943, Washington proposed what it called an International Trade Organization (ITO), a precursor to today’s World Trade Organization (WTO), to set global “rules for commerce.”

即使在第二次世界大战肆虐的时候，华盛顿就已做出对普遍开放贸易的初始承诺。毫无疑问，驱动这一承诺的是源自20世纪30年代斯姆特-霍利关税法的丑陋经历，一些经济学家声称这导致了大萧条，所有人都认同正是该关税法极大地推进了大萧条的深度和持续时间。早在1940年，富兰克林·罗斯福总统就促成了租借协议，以支持英国的一项规定，即任何接受这种援助的国家都必须与美国合作，建立一个自由、开放的战后世界经济体系。1941年与英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔签署的《大西洋宪章》，就包含了类似的语义。1943年，华盛顿提议设立一个它称之为国际贸易组织（ ITO ）的组织，就是当今世界贸易组织( WTO )的前身，用以制定全球“商业规则”。

For decades after the close of hostilities, Washington worked through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which grew out of the ITO proposal, to remove trade restrictions among all, not just a few trading nations. Initial rounds of negotiations first enlarged the number of countries acceding to GATT. Washington, in the words of then undersecretary of state for economic affairs, William L. Clayton, claimed that “economic advancement and political freedom would benefit from the liberal principles of free markets.” By the early 1960s, Washington worked through GATT’s so-called Dillon Round of negotiations to secure 10 percent tariff reductions throughout the international community, despite considerable European resistance. The Kennedy Round of the mid-1960s and the Tokyo Round in the early 1970s further reduced tariffs across the entire international trading community.

在二战敌对行动结束后的几十年里，华盛顿通过关税及贸易总协定（ GATT ）努力解除所有国家之间的贸易限制，而不仅仅是少数贸易国家，这一协定正是源自关于国际贸易组织（ITO）的提议。最初几轮谈判首先扩大了加入关贸总协定的国家数量。用当时主管经济事务的副国务卿威廉·L·克莱顿的话来说，华盛顿宣称“经济进步和政治自由将受益于自由市场的自由原则”。到了20世纪60年代初，华盛顿通过关贸总协定所谓的狄龙回合谈判，在整个国际社会确保了10 %的关税削减，尽管欧洲对此有相当大的阻力。60年代中期的肯尼迪回合和70年代早期的东京回合进一步降低了整个国际贸易界的关税。

This universal approach began to break down in the 1980s. Under pressure from the trade and currency disputes of the 1970s, the burden of expensive energy imports, and the frightening rise of Japanese economic power, Washington abandoned universal efforts and turned toward PTAs, presumably as a defense against formidable trade adversaries. NAFTA is an early example. It was negotiated in the late 1980s under President George H. W. Bush and implemented in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton. It does indeed promote free trade between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Otherwise, it excludes the rest of the world and, most pointedly at the time, Japan. It is almost as far from universal as trade can get. The TPP would have pointedly excluded China, Europe, and others. Even the EU counts as a PTA. It secures open trade among its members, but others—China, Japan, the United States, India, and many more—face considerable trade impediments imposed by the bloc.

这种普遍降低关税的方法在20世纪80年代开始瓦解。迫于20世纪70年代贸易和货币争端、昂贵的能源进口负担以及日本经济实力的可怕崛起的压力下，华盛顿放弃了对普遍自由贸易的努力，而转向特惠贸易协定，大概是为了抵御强大的贸易对手。北美自由贸易协定就是一个早期的例子，是在乔治·布什总统领导下于1980年代末谈判达成的，并由比尔·克林顿总统于1990年代落地实施。它确实促进了墨西哥、加拿大和美国之间的自由贸易。此外，它将世界其他地区排除在外，尤其是当时的日本。这几乎是国际贸易所能达到的最普惠的程度。跨太平洋伙伴关系协定则会有针对性地将中国、欧洲和其他国家排除在外。甚至欧盟也就算做一种特惠贸易协定，虽保证了成员国之间的开放贸易，但是其他国家——中国、日本、美国、印度以及其他更多国家——面临着欧盟强加的巨大贸易障碍。

The rising PTA approach killed the last attempt at more universal tariff reduction. In the early 2000s, the WTO lead such an attempt called the Doha Round after its venue. It failed after months of negotiations, in large part due to European resistance, on agricultural matters particularly. No additional efforts have emerged in the fifteen-some years since. That failure led former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy and a long list of trade economists to decry PTAs, even as the media erroneously treated them as agents of free trade. Lamy and these economists periodically beg the powers of this world—Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, and New Delhi among them—to return to the more universal efforts at free trade, for which Washington originally strived.

不断增加的特惠贸易协定趋向扼杀了最后一次更普惠的关税削减尝试。2000年代初，世界贸易组织在多哈回合谈判后率先发起了这种尝试。经过几个月的谈判，它失败了，这在很大程度上是拜欧洲的抵制所赐，尤其是在农业问题上。此后的十五年晨，也没有发起额外的努力尝试。这一失败导致前世贸组织总干事帕斯卡尔·拉米和一大批贸易经济学家来谴责那些特惠贸易协定，尽管媒体错误地将这类协定视为自由贸易的代表。拉米和这些经济学家时不时恳求这个世界的主要强权——包括华盛顿、布鲁塞尔、北京、东京和新德里——回到美国最初努力争取的更普惠的自由贸易目标。

If the media and America’s trading partners want to accuse Trump of upending the global trade order, they owe it to their readers to identify which order they fear Trump will upend. Is it the one of PTAs or is it the original, more universal effort at free trade? Trump, of course, seems not to care at all. It is a good bet that he, like his accusers, remains entirely unaware of how thoroughly notions of a world trade order have changed over time.

如果媒体和美国的贸易伙伴想要指责特朗普颠覆了全球贸易秩序，那么他们就有责任让读者知道他们担心特朗普会颠覆的到底是哪个秩序。是那些特惠贸易协定中的一个？还是最初始的、更普惠的自由贸易目标？当然，特朗普似乎一点也不在乎。这是一个很好的赌注，他和那些指责他的人一样，仍然完全不知道随着时间的推移，世界贸易秩序的概念发生了多么彻底的变化。

Trump clearly aims to alter the status quo. To what is much less clear. He cannot want a trade war, much as he seems willing to risk one to secure his objectives, whatever they are. Whether he is aware of the economic catastrophe one would bring, his advisors, most of them at least, are and have no doubt warned him many times. Most of his rhetoric implies that he would willingly work within the more recent PTA order, that he just wants what he describes as a “better deal” that would tilt the playing field more in America’s direction. If, however, he meant what he said when he departed the recent G-7 meetings in Canada, that his aim is to force the elimination of trade barriers and subsidies everywhere, then he would seem to want to jettison the PTA order and replace it with an approach more like the one pursued by Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Pascal Lamy, his colleagues, and others can only hope.

特朗普显然旨在改变现状。到底为了什么尚不太清楚。他不想要进行一场贸易战，似乎又更愿意冒险一战来实现他的目标，且不管他的那些目标是什么。不管他是否意识到一场贸易战将会带来的经济灾难，他的顾问们，至少大多数人，已经并且毫无疑问地多次警告过他。他的大部分言论暗示他愿意在更近签定的特惠贸易协定秩序下展开交易，他只是想要他所谓的“更好的交易”，这将使游戏规则更利于美国的掌控方向。然而，如果他的意思确实如他离开最近在加拿大举行的七国集团会议时所言，他的目标是迫使各地取消贸易壁垒和补贴，那么他似乎想放弃特惠贸易协定秩序，代之以更像罗斯福、杜鲁门、艾森豪威尔和肯尼迪所追求的普惠自由贸易目标。帕斯卡尔·拉米、他的同事以及其他人都只能寄希望于此了。

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at the National Interest , an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, the New York-based communications firm. His latest book is Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.

米尔顿·埃兹拉蒂是《国家利益》的特约编辑，该杂志是布法罗大学人力资本研究中心的附属机构，也是总部位于纽约的通讯公司的首席经济学家。他的最新着作是《三十个明天：未来三十年的全球化、人口统计，以及我们将如何生活》。