2018年8月1日，紐約通信公司Vested首席經濟學家Milton Ezrati在National Interest發表署名文章《特朗普正在挑起一場貿易戰》，現中英雙語全文編譯僅供參考。文章版權歸原作者所有，觀點不代表本機構立場。

圖片：華盛頓特區運動衫的標籤上有美國國旗，但在2011年1月14日美國華盛頓特區的紀念品攤位上寫著“中國製造”。路透社/ Kevin Lamarque

Trump Is Tempting a Trade War

Why is Donald Trump playing with fire?

作者：Milton Ezrati(National Interest的特約編輯，該公司是布法羅大學人力資本研究中心即紐約州立大學的附屬機構，也是紐約通信公司Vested的首席經濟學家。)

編譯：學術plus

原載：https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-tempting-trade-war-27522

There can be little doubt that Trump, by imposing tariffs and tempting trade war, is playing with fire. 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.

特朗普通過徵收關稅挑起貿易戰，毫無疑問他又開始玩火了。如果不迅速解決這一威脅和反擊威脅的遊戲，世界經濟將走上導致經濟衰退或更糟的道路。即便如此，指責特朗普“顛覆美國建立的全球貿易秩序”是荒謬的。幾十年前美國的貿易伙伴假裝渴望的所謂“秩序”早已被布什，克林頓，歐盟（EU）和其他人殺害。即便特朗普也無法殺死已死之人。

The original free-trade order, built assiduously by the United States in the decades following 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. It 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, often more stringent than existed prior to their formation.

美國在第二次世界大戰後的幾十年中刻苦地建立起來的原始自由貿易秩序，與過去三十年代占主導地位的貿易秩序完全不同。它在整個國際社會普遍尋求開放貿易，並積極地避開了最近建立獨家貿易集團的做法，如北美自由貿易協定和現已失敗的跨太平洋夥伴關係（TPP）。貿易經濟學家稱之為優惠貿易協定（PTAs）的這些安排雖然使用了自由貿易的語言，但卻與之相去甚遠。它們對簽署者以外的所有人增加了壁壘，甚至要比之前更加嚴格。

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 exhibited Washington’s direction by attaching 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 would 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.”

儘管第二次世界大戰肆虐，華盛頓承諾仍然得以實施並被普及。其驅動力毫無疑問源於20世紀30年代斯穆特 - 霍利關稅，一些經濟學家認為這導致了大蕭條，而所有人都認為其對大蕭條的深度和持續起到了推波助瀾的作用。早在1940年富蘭克林羅斯福總統通過附加貸款租賃協議，向英國提出一項規定，即任何獲得此類援助者必須與美國合作，建立一個自由開放的戰後經濟體系。1941年與英國首相溫斯頓丘吉爾簽署的“大西洋憲章”也有類似的表述。1943年，華盛頓提出了所謂的國際貿易組織（ITO），這是當今世界貿易組織（WTO）的前身。

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.

在敵對行動結束幾十年後，華盛頓通過“關稅與貿易總協定”（GATT）制定了一項協議，該協議源於ITO提案，旨在消除所有貿易限制，而不僅僅是少數幾個貿易國家。最初幾輪談判首先擴大了加入關貿總協定的國家數量。用當時負責經濟事務的副國務卿威廉·萊克頓的話說，華盛頓聲稱“經濟發展和政治自由將受益於自由市場原則。”到20世紀60年代初，儘管在歐洲遇到強大阻力，但華盛頓通過所謂的GATT狄龍回合談判確保整個國際社會降低10％的關稅。

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, 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.

20世紀80年代這種經濟秩序逐漸開始崩潰。20世紀70年代的貿易和貨幣糾紛的壓力，昂貴的能源進口負擔，以及日本經濟實力的驚人崛起之下，華盛頓為了抵禦強大的貿易對手從而轉向了優惠貿易協定。例如NAFTA，它在20世紀80年代後期由喬治·H·W·布什總統推進談判，並在20世紀90年代由比爾克林頓總統執行的。它確實促進了墨西哥、加拿大和美國之間的自由貿易。但是它排除了世界其他地區，尤其是日本。TPP也明確排除中國，歐洲和其他國家。甚至歐盟也算作是一種優惠貿易協定。

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 august 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.

優惠貿易協定確保了其成員之間的開放貿易，阻止了最後一次降低關稅的嘗試。在21世紀初期，世界貿易組織也進行了這種嘗試，多哈回合經過漫長的談判，特別是由於歐洲在農業問題上的抵制，最終失敗了。之後的十五年裡，情況仍沒有改變。儘管媒體錯誤地將世貿組織視為自由貿易的象徵，但這一失敗導致世貿組織前總幹事帕斯卡爾拉米和一長串八十年代貿易經濟學家譴責優惠貿易協定。拉米和這些經濟學家不斷呼籲世界大國（華盛頓，布魯塞爾，北京，東京和新德里）再次迴歸自由貿易的初心。

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.

如果媒體和美國的貿易伙伴想要指責特朗普顛覆全球貿易秩序，那麼他們應該證明他們擔心特朗普將會顛覆何種秩序。目前的貿易是否是保留自由貿易的初衷？特朗普根本不關心。可以肯定的是，他和他的控告者一樣，完全沒有意識到世界貿易秩序的概念在一段時間內是如何徹底改變的。

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 this country’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.

特朗普顯然旨在改變現狀。但他想要的並不是一場貿易戰，儘管他似乎願意冒著貿易戰的風險來捍衛他的目標。他的大多數言論暗示他願意在更近期的PTA秩序中工作，他只是想要他所描述的“更好的交易”。但假如按照他在離開加拿大舉行的七國集團會議時所說的，他的目的是強制消除各地的貿易壁壘和補貼，那麼他似乎想放棄PTA秩序並取而代之。更像是在追求一種羅斯福，杜魯門，艾森豪威爾和肯尼迪式的秩序。帕斯卡爾拉米和他的同事們只好希望如此了。

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