美国政策制定者的愚蠢贸易观

How are trade partners to respond when US policymakers talk nonsense? That is the situation in which Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans now find themselves. The words of Wilbur Ross, US commerce secretary, and the man who Donald Trump trusts most on trade policy, show one can be a billionaire and yet not understand how the economy works, just as one can be an athlete and not understand physiology.

当美国政策制定者胡说八道时，其贸易伙伴该如何应对？这正是欧洲人、日本人和韩国人如今面临的处境。美国商务部长威尔伯?罗斯(Wilbur Ross)是唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)在贸易政策上最信任的人，他的言论表明，一个不懂得经济如何运行的人也可以成为亿万富翁，正如一个不懂生理学人可以成为运动员。

Objecting to warnings of protectionism from Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Mr Ross told the Financial Times that “we are the least protectionist of the major areas. We are far less protectionist than Europe. We are far less protectionist than Japan. We are far less protectionist than China.”

在反驳国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁克里斯蒂娜?拉加德(Christine Lagarde)关于贸易保护主义的警告时，罗斯对英国《金融时报》表示：“我们是保护主义程度最轻的主要地区。我们远没有欧洲的保护主义那么严重。我们远没有日本的保护主义那么严重。我们远没有中国的保护主义那么严重。”

He added: “We also have trade deficits with all three of those places. So they talk free trade. But in fact what they practice is protectionism. And every time we do anything to defend ourselves, even against the puny obligations that they have, they call that protectionism. It’s rubbish.”

他还称：“我们还对所有这三个地区都有贸易逆差。所以他们在空谈自由贸易。但是事实上他们做的是保护主义那一套。而每次我们采取自卫行动，哪怕是针对他们应该承担的微小义务，他们都会称之为保护主义。那是胡扯。”

It is what Mr Ross says that is rubbish. A trade deficit is not proof that a country is open to trade. It is proof that it is spending more than its income or investing more than it saves. This is not just a theoretical point. Solid evidence supports it.

罗斯所说的才是胡扯。贸易逆差并非一国贸易开放的证据。它只能证明一国的支出多过收入，或者投资多过储蓄。这不仅仅是一个理论观点。有确凿的证据支持这一点。

The Heritage Foundation, no less, provides an annual Index of Economic Freedom, which includes “trade freedom”. The think-tank, which prides itself on commanding influence in the Trump administration, derives the latter from data on trade-weighted tariffs and non-tariff barriers. The US, it shows, has far from the most liberal trade policies.

美国传统基金会(Heritage Foundation)每年都发布包括“贸易自由度”在内的经济自由度指数(Index of Economic Freedom)。这家以可对特朗普政府施加影响为傲的智库，利用关于贸易加权关税和非关税壁垒的数据得出贸易自由度。该指标显示，美国贸易政策远非最自由的。

These measures of trade freedom can be combined with data on current account balances, adjusted for the size of economies. (On this basis, the US deficit was 98th biggest out of 177 countries.) Just as theory predicts, no significant relationship exists between trade freedom and deficits. To the extent there is one, it is in the opposite direction: there is a weak tendency for liberal traders to run larger surpluses.

这些衡量贸易自由度的指标可以结合经常账户余额数据，并根据经济体的规模调整。（在此基础上，美国的逆差规模在177个国家中排第98位。）就像有学说预言的那样，贸易自由度与逆差之间并不存在显著关联。如果有的话，也是一种反向关系：自由贸易国有产生更大顺差的弱趋势。

The idea that protection will reduce trade deficits does make intuitive sense. It is wrong, however, because the economy does not consist of isolated markEts: everything is related to everything else. Taxes on imports are also taxes on exports. If one imposes protection against imports, one pulls resources out of production for export. To put the point in other words, exports are just a way of supplying imports. If a country imports less, because of protection, the incentive to produce exports will, other things being equal, also fall. The mechanism through which this is likely to happen, in the case of the US, will be a rise in the dollar, as the demand for imports falls. Thus, protection reduces ratios of trade to gross domestic product (making economies more closed), not trade deficits.

贸易保护将减少贸易逆差的确听起来言之有理。然而，这种观点是错误的，因为经济并非由孤立的市场构成：一切都是相互关联的。对进口征税也是对出口征税。如果一国抵制进口，则会导致用于生产出口商品的资源减少。换句话说，出口只是供应进口的一种方式。如果一国因贸易保护减少进口，生产出口商品的动力（在其他条件不变的情况下）也将下降。就美国而言，随着对进口的需求下降，可能造成这种情况发生的机制将是美元走强。因此，贸易保护会降低贸易占国内生产总值(GDP)的比重（使经济更加封闭），而非减少贸易逆差。

Now compare the savings rates of high-income economies with their current account balances (again relative to GDP). Just as one would expect, differences in national savings rates are powerful predictors of current account balances. If we look at high-income countries alone, we find that the US is not exceptional in any way. It is a relatively low-saving country that, largely as a result, has persistently run a current account deficit.

现在，我们比较一下高收入经济体的储蓄与它们的经常账户余额（还是相对于GDP）。正如人们所料，国民储蓄的差异可以很好地用于预测经常账户余额。如果只看高收入国家，我们会发现，美国一点也不例外。美国是一个储蓄相对较低的国家，很大程度因为这一点，美国才一直保持经常账户赤字。

This has allowed the US to invest more than it saves. If it wishes to reduce its external deficits, it must either lower investment (evidently, a bad idea) or raise savings. If it wishes to do the latter, the obvious start would be not to slash taxes, as planned, but raise them, instead.

这使得美国的投资多过本国储蓄。如果美国希望降低外部赤字，它必须要么减少投资（这显然是个坏主意）要么增加储蓄。如果美国想增加储蓄，第一步就是不要按原计划那样减税，而是要增税。

Mr Ross’s misunderstandings of the economics of trade are far from harmless follies. The administration’s fiscal policies seem sure to increase the US external deficit, for which foreigners will be blamed. Its trade policies will fail to reduce US trade deficits, for which foreigners will again be blamed. The US will propose the ludicrous objective of bilateral trade balancing in a world in which commerce itself is multilateral. This too will fail, for which foreigners will be also blamed. In all, the administration could demolish the open trading system simply because it is clueless.

罗斯对贸易经济学的误解，绝不是一些毫无害处的傻念头。特朗普政府的财政政策看起来势必会增加美国的外部赤字，外国人将为此背锅。而其贸易政策将不能减少美国的贸易逆差，外国人将再次背锅。美国将提出可笑的目标，想在一个商业本身就多边化的世界里取得双边贸易平衡。这也会失败，然后再次甩锅到外国人头上。总而言之，特朗普政府可能会仅仅因为无知而废除开放的贸易制度。

The trading system has been the basis of post-second world war prosperity. This period has in turn been the most prosperous for humanity in history. An excellent recent paper from the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization lays out both what is at stake and needs to be done to spread the gains from trade more widely.

该贸易制度是二次世界大战后繁荣的基础，这一时期也是迄今人类历史上最繁荣的时期。IMF、世界银行(World Bank)和世界贸易组织(WTO)最近发表了一篇精彩的文章，清晰地阐述了更广泛地分配贸易的好处所要涉及的紧要问题以及需要做些什么。

In particular, it demonstrates that creating a safety net for affected workers and communities, combined with policies to support adjustment to change, is effective. Yet that is precisely what the Republicans intend to weaken. Alas, that makes protection the only policy on offer to those adversely affected by economic changes, including imports.

这篇文章还特别论证了为受影响的劳动者和群体建立一张安全网，结合支持针对变革作出调整的政策，是有效的。但这正是共和党人打算削弱的。唉，这让保护主义成了对那些受经济变化——包括进口——不利影响的人唯一能提供的政策。

What is frightening about the trade agenda of the administration is that it manages to be both irrelevant and damaging. A relevant agenda would focus on the imbalances in savings and investment across the world economy. A beneficial agenda would focus on combining the necessary adjustment to economic change, of which trade is a relatively small part, with widening shares in the gains and assistance with adjustment. It would also recognise that trade has been one of the engines of economic dynamism. What is most worrying about trade has been the slowdown in its growth. That, the World Bank suggests, may be one reason for the productivity slowdown.

特朗普政府贸易议程的可怕之处在于，它既不切中要害，又有破坏性。切中要害的议程会侧重于整个世界经济中储蓄和投资的不平衡。有益的议程会侧重于将针对经济变化（贸易在其中只占了相对小的一部分）的必要调整，与扩大好处分享并协助调整相结合。这样的议程还会承认，贸易一直是经济活力的引擎之一。贸易最令人担忧之处一直是增长放缓。世界银行认为，这可能是生产率下滑的一个原因。

So how should trade partners respond to US demands? They need to accept the significance of macroeconomic imbalances. They need to make concessions that increase trade, without damaging the global economy. They need to argue the case for multilateral liberalisation. They need to do whatever they can to protect the principle of trade rules that bind both strong and the weak. Above all, they need to be patient. The US should not be governed forever by those who have so little understanding of what is at stake.

那么美国的贸易伙伴应该如何回应美国的要求呢？他们需要承认宏观经济失衡的显著性。他们需要作出让步以增加贸易，不去损害全球经济。他们需要为多边自由化据理力争。他们需要极尽所能地去保护能够约束强弱双方的贸易规则原则。最重要的是，他们需要有耐心。美国应该不会永远掌控在那些对紧要问题如此缺乏了解的人的手中。