全球贸易停滞的隐忧 The warning signs of trade stagnation

With Greece out of the spotlight, global investors have returned to worrying about a future rise in US interest rates and the volatility that could bring to markets. They appear to be supremely unconcerned by the stagnation in world trade this year. But that could turn out to be a costly mistake.

随着希腊淡出人们的视野焦点，全球投资者重新开始忧虑美国何时加息及其可能给市场带来的波动。他们似乎对今年全球贸易陷入停滞无动于衷。但这可能酿成一个代价高昂的错误。

The latest World Trade Monitor showed the volume of world trade falling in May, by 1.2 per cent. It has slid in four out of five months in 2015 and risen just 1.5 per cent in the past 12 months — less than the growth in global output and far below the long-term average of about 7 per cent a year.

最新一期的《世界贸易监测》(World Trade Monitor)表明，今年5月全球贸易量下滑1.2%。2015年的头5个月中有4个月都出现下滑。过去12个月里全球贸易量仅增长1.5%——这不仅低于全球产出增长，也远低于7%的长期平均年增长水平。

The problem has been getting worse for some time. Trade bounced back fairly well in 2010 after the global recession but it has disappointed ever since, growing by barely 3 per cent in 2012 and 2013. Now it seems the world cannot manage even that.

这个问题不断恶化已经有一段时间了。全球经济衰退后，贸易在2010年出现相当不错的反弹，但此后就一直令人失望，在2012年和2013年都仅增长了3%，现在似乎连这样的增长水平都达不到了。

The prevailing view is that we do not need to worry about this weakness because it is largely structural. According to this argument, exceptional forces that conspired to make growth more trade-intensive in the 1990s and 2000s are now coming to a natural end.

普遍看法是，我们无需忧虑这种疲弱的状态，因为这主要是结构性问题。根据这种说法，在1990年代和2000年代促使经济增长“贸易密集度”较高的多种特殊力量正迎来自然终结。

Those decades brought a historic decline in trade barriers and global transportation costs together with the dramatic entry of emerging market economies into the world trading system — notably China. All that, in turn, helped produce a much deeper division of International labour which sent different parts of a single production chain to far-flung parts of the world.

在那二十年，贸易壁垒和全球运输成本出现历史性下降，同时新兴市场经济体戏剧性地进入全球贸易体系——特别是中国。这一切进而在国际间推动了更深层次的劳动分工，使单一生产链的不同环节散布于世界的不同角落。

A recent study by the International Monetary Fund calculated that in the 1990s, every 1 per cent rise in global income generated a 2.5 per cent rise in global trade, much more than in the past. But not any more. Obviously, global growth could not become more trade-intensive forever. In fact, the volume of trade in services is still going up. But in manufacturing, rising costs and greater self-sufficiency in emerging markets and changing production techniques around the world have led many of those intricate global value chains to be unpicked. Since 2013 every 1 per cent of global growth has pro搀甀挀攀搀 a trade bump of just 0.7 per cent.

国际货币基金组织(IMF)最近的一项研究计算出，在20世纪90年代，全球收入每增长1%，全球贸易就会增长2.5%，比以往多得多，但这样的情况不再出现了。显然，全球增长的贸易密集度不会永远增长下去。实际上，服务贸易量依然在上升。但在制造业，新兴市场成本上升和自给自足程度提高，以及世界各地生产方式的变化，已导致不少复杂的全球价值链不复存在。自2013年以来，每1%的全球增长只能产生0.7%的贸易增长。

China is the great case study. In the mid-1990s as much as 60 per cent of the value of the country’s goods exports came from imported parts and materials. That has now fallen to about 35 per cent. In the US, manufacturing imports have not risen at all as a share of gross domestic product since 2000. In the decade before that they nearly doubled.

中国是一个很好的案例。上世纪90年代中期，中国出口的产品多达60%的价值来自于进口零部件和原材料。如今这一比例已经降至约35%。在美国，自2000年以来，制造业进口占国内生产总值(GDP)的比重一直没有上升。而在之前十年，这一比重几乎翻了一倍。

For some, this is perfectly natural and nothing to be concerned about. But structural forces can explain why trade is growing more slowly — they cannot explain why it is barely growing at all.

对一些人而言，这是再正常不过的了，根本无需担忧。但是，结构性力量可以解释贸易为什么增长得更慢，却解释不了贸易为什么几乎不增长。

In fact, there are three more short-term explanations for the weak trade numbers, which should demand the attention of policymakers.

实际上，对于贸易数据疲软，还有三个短期解释应该引起政策制定者的注意。

The first is that global investment demand continues to fall short. For several years, emerging market economies bucked the trend but capital spending has now slowed in such countries as well. This translates into lower trade growth because capital goods are more trade-intensive. It matters because it does not just dampen growth today but could also limit growth in the future by further slowing growth in productivity.

第一，全球投资需求持续不足。新兴市场经济体曾在数年时间里顶住这一趋势，但如今这些国家的资本支出也放缓了。因为资本产品的贸易密集度较高，这就压低了贸易增长。这关系重大，因为这不仅抑制当前的增长，还会进一步减缓生产率的提高，从而抑制未来增长。

Another warning from the trade data is that the recovery in domestic demand in the US and Europe this year is not being seen elsewhere. Latin America appears to have contracted between the end of March and the beginning of July, and JPMorgan estimates that Asian emerging market economies — excluding China — grew by just 1.4 per cent. China is doing better but not nearly as well as it was. This weakness is worrying at a time when many governments in such countries have less room to ease policy than they did before and are already dealing with weak commodity prices and a stronger dollar.

贸易数据发出的另一个警报是：今年以来美国和欧洲出现的国内需求复苏，并没有在其他地区出现。拉美在3月底至7月初似乎出现了萎缩，同时据摩根大通(JPMorgan)估计，除中国以外，亚洲新兴市场经济体仅增长1.4%。中国表现更好，但远不及过去的水平。这种疲弱令人担忧，因为这类国家中许多政府放宽政策的空间比过去更小，同时它们还正在应对疲弱的大宗商品价格和美元走强。

Last weekend, Beijing announced new measures to revive demand through stronger exports — including a slightly more flexible currency. I doubt the Chinese authorities are about to engineer a big depreciation in the renminbi when they are also trying to develop its role as a reserve currency, and Chinese companies have borrowed so much in dollars. But the pressures are clearly there.

最近北京宣布多项新举措，通过加强出口来重振需求——其中包括采用略微提高人民币汇率弹性。考虑到中国政府正努力推动人民币成为一种储备货币，且中国企业借入了许多美元，我认为中国当局应该不会策划让人民币大幅贬值。但压力显然是摆在那里的。

That highlights the final lesson: in today’s global economy, governments should not be trying to reflate their economies on the back of a weak currency alone. Since coming to power in 2012, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, has done much to help his country’s economy, but one thing Abenomics has not accomplished is to increase exports. Many European policy洀愀欀攀爀猀 think the weak euro has been the making of the eurozone recovery. But it has not yet. Net trade made a negative contribution to eurozone growth in the first three months of 2015 and trade’s contribution is likely to be barely positive for the rest of 2015.

这就凸显了最后一个教训：在当今的全球经济中，政府不应仅靠货币贬值来推动本国经济再膨胀。自2012年执政以来，日本首相安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)为促进日本经济做了很多工作，但安倍经济学没有做到的一点就是增加出口。很多欧洲政策制定者认为，欧元走软推动了欧元区复苏。但实际情况并不是这样。2015年头3个月，净贸易对欧元区增长的贡献为负，而在2015年余下时间里，贸易对增长的贡献也很可能只能勉强达到正数。

For all the talk about the euro, the single most encouraging aspect of Europe’s recovery since the turn of the year has been the strength of domestic demand. But private capital investment in the eurozone is still flat and has been even weaker than in the US since 2010.

尽管各方对欧元念念不忘，但今年以来欧洲复苏最鼓舞人心的一个方面是国内需求强劲。但是欧元区私人部门资本投资依然表现平平，而且自2010年以来一直比美国更加疲软。

If consumption and investment firm up on both sides of the Atlantic, we should start to see global trade pick up as well. But policymakers should not kid themselves that trade is going to rescue them from their domestic economic travails as in the past.

如果大西洋两岸的消费与投资都上升，我们应该能开始看到全球贸易的回暖。但政策制定者不应自欺欺人地认为，贸易能像过去那样让他们从国内经济的阵痛中解脱出来。