海外之声 | 特朗普的贸易战充满矛盾、愤怒和错误
本文作者是美国华盛顿DC卡托研究所赫伯特·A·斯蒂菲尔贸易政策研究中心主任丹尼尔·J·依肯森。原文首发于Global Asia期刊。
作者从四个方面详细分析了特朗普对外贸易政策的误导性和矛盾性，指出了他诸多行为举措的错误性。作者认为他背离了美国维持80年之久的贸易政策，走的路令人极为不安。这一贸易战充满无知、任性和民族主义怨恨，或将使美国被国际社会孤立，局面令人堪忧。
中文译文如下：
特朗普的贸易战充满矛盾、愤怒和错误
丹尼尔·J·依肯森
翻译：刘斌
审校：熊若洁
2018年6月22日
据美国宪法，国会有权利征收关税和“管理与国外进行的贸易”。但是在20世纪，国会通过立法，将该权利部分转交给了总统。这样转交权利，虽然最终目标是为了促进减税的进程，但却被美国总统特朗普利用，系统性地将一些法规“武器化”，用于服务“美国第一”这一眼光短浅的保护主义贸易政策。
自上任以来，特朗普滥用职权，根据三条很少援引的贸易法，发起了六项调查。其中五项调查致使特朗普对超过1500种产品（钢铁、铝、洗衣机、太阳能电池板组件以及主要来自中国的科技产品）征收或宣布关税，总价值约1000亿美元。另有一项新调查，分析进口汽车和零部件是否威胁美国国土安全，可能会导致额外价值3000亿美元的进口商品受到制裁。若考虑其他国家对美国出口商采取相称报复的可能，今年年底将有约8000亿美元的商品陷入贸易战中，约等于美国贸易总量的20%。并且是在没有新的制裁或针锋相对局势升级的前提下。
美国前13任总统——从1934年签署《分水岭互惠贸易协定法》的罗斯福总统至奥巴马——一致认为贸易是互利共赢的，有助于促进经济增长和维持国家间良好关系。所以他们在任期间都在避免贸易战争，各届美国政府也均致力于降低贸易障碍、尊重规则和支持贸易体制。
特朗普的世界观却与众不同。他背离了美国维持80年之久的贸易政策，走的路令人极为不安。虽然特朗普之前也有美国总统将国内的一些或有问题归咎于国外贸易行为，但是特朗普却是第一位认为，想要让美国强大就必须走保护主义道路的总统。毫无疑问，他的确是历史上唯一一位在社交网站上宣称“贸易战是好事，容易获胜”的国家元首。特朗普的贸易政策结合了多种恶性元素，包括无知、任性和民族主义怨恨。
1
保持错误的分数
最能代表特朗普贸易观的，就是他在经济学上犯的谬误。与前任美国总统不同，特朗普并不认为贸易是互利共赢的，而认为是零和的博弈，有明确的赢家和败者。在特朗普看来，出口为“美国队”加分；进口为“外国队”加分；而贸易账簿则成为了计分板。由于计分板现在表明贸易赤字，而大部分国家也与美国维持了贸易顺差，因此美国在贸易方面输了——而输的原因就是之前的总统都不会谈判，而且“外国队”都在作弊。而恰是在赤字方面，特朗普看见了扭转局面的杠杆。
在特朗普看来，如果一个国家与美国维持贸易顺差，就意味着该国更加依靠美国市场，相比下美国就不依赖该国市场。这使关税——甚至贸易战——成为了强力有效的筹码，可迫使外国政府顺从特朗普的要求。然而至今，没有几个国家屈服。美国威胁提高钢铁关税和退出双边贸易协议，向韩国施压，迫使韩国限制钢铁出口，并提高进口美国汽车配额。而其他有经济实力的国家，则选择了反击。
当然，如果打响贸易战，美国的确受到的影响要小于其他国家——毕竟美国经济对贸易的依赖要低于几乎任何一个国家：进出口仅占美国GDP的27%，相比下全球平均水平为53%——但是美国也会受到不小的打击。以美国“杀敌一万自损三千”，损伤要低于中国或欧洲等地区为由而打响贸易战，仅暴露了特朗普对贸易和世界经济运作模式极为肤浅的认识，已至令人堪忧的境界。
今天，全球贸易大部分交易的是都中间产品——生产商将产业分散分布在全球，使产业多样化，从而提高了效率，降低了成本并提高了竞争力。而上世纪，大部分公司的生产模式和产品组装都是在单一的地理位置发生的，通常一个工厂就够了。当然很快这种生产模式就已被打破，如今生产链布遍全球。在当今的背景下，为进口商品施加关税，就会阻碍生产、提高成本，无异于在20世纪流水线中间堵起一面墙。这就是为什么美国制造业强烈反对特朗普提高关税。美国进口关税将提高生产成本，同时国外政府采取反制措施又会降低出口收入，这使生产商利润受到两面夹击。
2017年美国进口商品总额达2.2万亿美元——其中1.1万亿美元用于购买原材料、中间产品或资本设备——而美国出口总额达到1.5万亿美元。假如特朗普政府对所有进口商品都增加10%的关税，那么生产商的成本会提升约1100亿美元（1.1万亿美元乘以10%）。来自外国相称的反制措施会减少美国出口利润约1500亿美元（1.5万亿美元乘以10%）。加在一起，成本上升，利润下降，就使美国制造业损失2600亿美元。去年美国制造业利润达5500亿美元，因此若仅将关税提升10%，就已经可以致使美国制造业利润减半。当特朗普宣称保护主义可以让美国制造业复苏时，我们不由得会质疑，关税赶走的利润究竟应该从何处而来呢？
2
误导和谬论
特朗普的贸易政策是由误导性数据和谬误言论推进的，宣称贸易摧毁了美国制造业。特朗普言辞流露今不如昔的情怀，过去美国制造业无可匹敌，占美国经济很大一部分，也为美国劳动力提供了许多就业岗位。美国制造业在1953年占本国经济的28.1%，占比达到了巅峰，随后就开始下滑。2017年，仅为GDP的11.6%。
但值得注意的是1953年，美国制造业增值为1100亿美元，而到了2017年，达到了历史新高2.24万亿美元。美国制造业如今的产出虽然占比没有过去高，但论实际值却已翻了6倍，所以不能说是在下滑。制造业如今雇佣的员工为最高值，也就是1979年的1940万的2/3，但是这也反应了平均每个工人的生产效率大幅度提高，主要受益于新的生产技术。
特朗普似乎认为制造业是经济唯一重要的部分——甚至可以说是经济的唯一部分。当特朗普和其顾问团队讨论贸易平衡时，他们直接忽略了美国服务业，也就是美国最具竞争力且增长速度最快的领域。好像对他们来说谷歌、亚马逊、金融服务、保险公司、旅游和知识产权机构不存在一样。去年美国服务业出口总额达到8000亿美元，为美国产生了2500亿的贸易顺差。
美国消费者在服务上的支出是商品支出的两倍，90%劳动力在非制造业领域就业，因此过分关注制造业是不正确的。同时，特朗普其实也只是关心制造业中的重工业而已，如汽车制造业和钢铁产业。特朗普没注意到——或者其政策未反映出——制造业中存在的各种其他行业，许多行业都担心特朗普钢铁和铝矿关税将带来的后果。如果说美国钢铁生产业GDP提供1美元，那么钢铁消耗产业就提供29美元；如果钢铁生产业雇佣1名美国人，那么使用钢铁消耗产业就雇佣46名美国人。特朗普在宣称25%进口关税“保护”美国钢铁生产业的同时，他和手下的顾问却淡化了政策对钢铁消耗产业的负面影响。
3
政策模糊和矛盾
虽然人们很难识别特朗普政府具体的贸易策略，但似乎这种模糊的政策反而是故意设计的，为了煽起一种不确定的环境。有些人认为政策产生的反对，可以转移民众的注意力，分散特朗普国内面临的道德质疑和官司诉讼等难题。其实同时，这种煽动的噪音也可帮助特朗普政府控制全球供给链。
特朗普试图阻止美国公司在海外投资。他在社交媒体上羞辱那些打算在墨西哥建厂的美国企业，并且威胁向美国企业征收35%再进口关税，以阻止海外转移。特朗普多次威胁退出北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）；他强调应修订NAFTA，让更多的美国产品受到优先待遇；他要求NAFTA设立五年落日条款，若各方不在此期间扩展协约，NAFTA就应解散。上述行为都是为了产生不确定性而设计的。原因是什么？
贸易协定允许一些国家优先准入美国市场，特朗普担心协定会鼓励投资从美国转移到贸易伙伴国。他认为只要世界相信美国随时都会立起贸易屏障，外国企业就会想在美国投资从而对冲风险——也就是在关税屏障内进行投资。这听起来可能自我矛盾，但却是“美国第一”民族主义分子集会时最普遍的思维，这些人仍沉浸于1982年，当时里根总统以汽车进口关税为胁，促使本田在美国建立了第一家海外工厂。
不论如何，时代已经发生了改变。美国仍旧是最能吸引国外直接投资（FDI）的国家，进入21世纪后这20来年，其全球FDI存量份额已从39%下降到了17%。决定投资的因素有许多，而且随着各国的发展，投资的目的地也越来越多。当然市场的大小十分重要，但同时还有许多其他因素，包括放宽供给链准入、对法律的尊重、政策可预测性以及商业运转和管理中存在确定性等。
特朗普让贸易政策更加不可预判，建立一种“政策不确定性”环境，其实赌的是投资会因此流入美国。首先这样做很难成功，而且目的本身——吸引投资——也与特朗普首要目标相悖，即降低贸易逆差。如果美国人进口的商品或服务比出口多（贸易逆差），那么其实出口国外的资产就会比进口的多（资产顺差）。因此提高投资并降低贸易逆差是不可能同时发生的，因此特朗普的政策是矛盾的。
4
利用愤怒的政策
愤怒也是“美国第一”言论中普遍的情怀。特朗普以及手下许多顾问把美国视为慈祥的巨人，无私地提供了资源、安全和精神力量，帮助西欧、东亚以及全球各地从第二次世界大战的废墟中站起来。在美国撑起的安全伞下，西方其他国家都在剥削美国的好心。这些国家索取比提供的多；在一些领域没有按照规矩从事，夺取了优势；他们采取了自私自利的政策，以美国的工业基础为代价，得到发展；发展后反过来又成为了美国的经济对手，展开了与美国政府相悖的外交和地缘政治观点。最起码故事是这么讲的。
这种思维模式下，其他国家的政府理应顺从美国的外交和经济立场，并接受美国至上主义的思维。在特朗普和其顾问看来，美国无私地引领给各国树立全球贸易规则和体制，却在国际贸易组织中，尤其在WTO贸易争端解决机构中，没有收到优先待遇和应有的尊敬，这是极大的侮辱。以此为背景就不难看出特朗普提出钢铁、铝、科技产品关税后，为什么十分愤怒——加拿大、墨西哥、欧盟和中国竟敢采取反制性措施。
特朗普政府担忧中国促进工商的政策并非没有道理，但是采取的手段从头至尾只能用“灾难”来形容。美国客观上不需要中国每年多购买2000亿美元的商品。降低与中国的贸易逆差是一个滑稽的，甚至愚蠢的目标。
相反，美国应该迫使中国进行更深层次且可以检测的改革，使中国表里如一地按照全球贸易法则而行事。美国应该和其他志同道合的国家一道向中国政府表明有些行为是不可接受的。然而特朗普却朝着反方向发力。美国撤出了《跨太平洋伙伴贸易协定》，并以钢铁、铝关税攻击盟友。美国背离了WTO规则，单方面施加制裁，使美国被国际社会孤立。美国必须更正自己犯得这些错误，但可能现在已经来不及了。
那些与特朗普观点类似的人——认为贸易是“敌我关系”的人”——可能会认为美国总统违反国际准则，挑起贸易战争是正确的举措。更有阿谀奉承的人，表示特朗普的政策是天才之举。另有一些支持者，虽然知道特朗普不对，却为其开脱，称总统先生只不过是为了履行选举承诺——看吧，终于有一个政客履行自己的承诺了！这些人都是共犯，都应为特朗普带来的愚昧、挑衅甚至疯狂的贸易政策负责。
英文原文如下：
Trump’s Trade Wars Are Incoherent, Angry and Misguided
Daniel J. Ikenson
June 22, 2018
The US Constitution vests authority in Congress to collect duties and to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.” But over the course of the 20th century, Congress delegated some of that authority to the president through legislation. Although the purpose was, ultimately, to facilitate the process of reducing tariffs, President Donald Trump has systematically weaponized a few statutes to serve a small-minded, protectionist, “America First” trade policy.
Since taking office, Trump has misappropriated his authority to launch six investigations under three seldom-invoked trade laws. Five of those investigations have led to the president imposing or announcing tariffs on imports of more than 1,500 products (steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar-panel components, and, mostly, Chinese technology products) valued at about US$100 billion. A new investigation into whether imports of automobiles and parts constitute a national-security threat could lead to sanctions on another US$300 billion of imports. Taking into consideration the likelihood of commensurate retaliation against American exporters, US$800 billion of US trade — or about 20 percent of total US trade in goods — could be ensnared in a trade war by year’s end. And that assumes no new cases or an escalating tit-for-tat.
The last 13 presidents of the United States — going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed into law the watershed Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934 — considered trade to be mutually beneficial for their fostering of economic growth and good relations among nations. Those presidents aimed to avoid trade wars and committed their administrations to reducing barriers, respecting the rules, and supporting the institutions of trade.
Trump sees the world differently. He has departed from more than 80 years of US trade policy continuity, charting a new and deeply troubling course. Although Trump is not the first president to blame foreign trade practices for problems real and imagined, he may be the first to believe that protectionism is essential to making America great. He is certainly the only head of state ever to tweet that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Trump’s trade policy is motivated by a toxic blend of ignorance, petulance and nationalist grievance.
1
Keeping the Wrong Kind of Score
More than anything else, economic fallacies inform this president’s trade views. Unlike his predecessors, he sees trade not as a win-win proposition, but as a zero-sum game with distinct winners and losers. Exports are Team America’s points; imports are the foreign teams’ points; the trade account is the scoreboard. Since the board shows a large overall deficit, and many bilateral deficits with individual countries, the US is losing at trade — and it’s losing because Trump’s predecessors were bad negotiators and because the foreign teams cheat. But in those US trade deficits, Trump also sees leverage.
Countries registering surpluses, Trump reckons, are more dependent upon the US market than US exporters are on theirs, making the threat of tariffs — even trade wars — an effective and powerful tool to compel foreign governments to cave in to his demands. Yet, so far, there has been very little acquiescence to those demands. Under the threat of steel tariffs and US withdrawal from their bilateral trade agreement, South Korea opted to put out the fire by agreeing to limit its exports of steel and raise its quota on imports of US automobiles. Other countries with economic heft, however, are fighting back.
In any case, while it might be true that the US would be less weakened than other countries by a trade war — after all, the US economy depends less on trade than almost every other country: imports plus exports account for 27 percent of US gross domestic product compared to a world average of 53 percent — the damage to the US economy would be considerable nonetheless. Cavalierly inviting a trade war because US “casualties” would be lighter than, for example, China’s or Europe’s, betrays a worrying absence of understanding of how trade and the global economy really work.
Most global trade is in intermediate goods — the purchases of producers, who have decentralized and diversified their operations to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and compete more effectively. Whereas in the 20th century, most of a company’s production and assembly took place in one location, often under one roof, the factory floor has since broken through those walls and now spans borders and oceans. Taxing imports today is akin to erecting a wall through the center of that 20th century assembly line, impeding production and raising costs in similar fashion. That helps explain the preponderance of opposition among US manufacturers to Trump’s trade tack. US tariffs raise their costs, and the resulting retaliation from foreign governments will reduce their export revenues, squeezing profits from both ends.
In 2017, US goods imports totaled US$2.2 trillion — of which US$1.1 trillion were purchases of raw materials, intermediate goods and capital equipment — and US goods exports totaled US$1.5 trillion. If Trump were to impose, for example, a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports, producer costs would rise by roughly US$110 billion (or 10 percent of US$1.1 trillion). Commensurate retaliation abroad would reduce US export revenues by roughly US$150 billion (or 10 percent of US$1.5 trillion). Together, the increased costs and reduced revenue would amount to a US$260 billion reduction in manufacturing-sector profits. Last year, the US manufacturing sector’s profits were US$550 billion, so a 10 percent import levy alone could end up cutting profits nearly in half. When Trump claims that protectionism will revitalize manufacturing and bring back jobs, one can only wonder where he thinks the investment will come from without the profits his tariffs will chase away.
2
False and Misleading
Trump’s trade policy is driven by misleading statistics and the fallacious narrative that trade destroyed US manufacturing. Trump pines for the days when US industry was unrivaled in the world, accounting for a larger share of the US economy, and employing a significant chunk of the labor force. Manufacturing’s share of the US economy peaked in 1953 at 28.1 percent and has been on a downward trajectory ever since. In 2017, that share was only 11.6 percent of GDP.
But in 1953, US manufacturing’s value-added amounted to US$110 billion, whereas in 2017, it reached a record high of US$2.24 trillion. A sector that today produces more than six times the value in real terms than it produced when it was of much greater significance to the US economy can hardly be described as declining. The sector employs about two-thirds the number of workers as it did at its peak of 19.4 million in 1979, but that reflects massive increases in output per worker, which is attributable primarily to the adoption of new technologies.
Trump seems to believe that manufacturing is the only part of the economy that matters — or the only part of the economy, full stop. When citing trade balances, the president and his advisors simply ignore US services, where the US is most competitive and growing fastest. It’s as if Google and Amazon, financial services and insurance companies, tourism and intellectual property licensing don’t exist. Last year, US services exports amounted to US$800 billion and generated a US$250 billion trade surplus.
For a nation whose consumers spend twice as much on services than on goods, and where 90 percent of the workforce is employed outside the manufacturing sector, the obsession with manufacturing is misplaced. But even Trump’s concerns about manufacturing are reserved for just a few heavy industries, such as steel and automobiles. He fails to recognize — or at least his policies fail to reflect — the diversity of industries within manufacturing, many of which are worried about the pain from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. For every US$1 that steel producers add to GDP, steel users add US$29; for every one job in steel production, there are 46 in steel-using industries. While Trump wants credit for “protecting” the steel industry with a 25 percent import tariff, he and his advisers downplay the adverse impact on steel-consuming producers.
3
Incoherent Uncerntainty
Although it’s difficult to discern any coherent trade-policy strategy, the administration’s incoherent strategy seems to be to intentionally foment a climate of uncertainty. Some suggest the policy dissonance is intended to distract the public from the president’s mounting domestic legal and ethical woes, but the persistent noise may be conducive to the administration’s goal of repatriating global supply chains.
Trump has sought to deter US companies from investing abroad. His tweet-shaming of US firms that were considering establishing assembly operations in Mexico, and his threats of 35 percent taxes on re-importation into the US dissuaded a few from moving forward with their plans. Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw the US from the North American Free Trade Agreement; his insistence that any revised NAFTA agreement should require that products contain more US content to qualify for preferential treatment; and his demand for a five-year sunset clause under which NAFTA would automatically terminate unless the parties affirmatively agree to extend its terms are all designed to create uncertainty. Why?
Trump fears that trade agreements, which extend preferential access to the US market, encourage investment diversion and outflows from the US to the economies of its trade agreement partners. And he believes that by convincing the world that US trade barriers could rise at any moment, foreign companies will want to hedge their bets by investing in the US — inside the tariff wall. It may sound cynical and self-defeating, but this kind of thinking permeates the strategy sessions of America First nationalists, who like to think the specter of President Ronald Reagan’s threatened tariffs on automobiles induced Honda to build the first foreign automobile plant in the US in 1982.
Either way, things have changed since then. The US is still the world’s top destination for foreign direct investment, but its share of the global stock of FDI has decreased from 39 percent to 17 percent during the first two decades of the 21st century. The determinants of investment are diverse and many, and the number of viable destinations competing for that investment has increased as countries have developed. Obviously, the size of the market is important, but so are many other factors, including ease of access to supply chains, respect for the rule of law, policy predictability, and certainty in the business and regulatory climate.
Trump is betting that by making policy less predictable and creating an environment of “regime uncertainty,” investment will flow into the US. Not only is the success of that approach doubtful, but the objective itself — attracting investment — is at odds with the president’s primary goal, which is to reduce the trade deficit. When Americans buy more goods and services from foreigners than they sell to them (trade deficit), then they also sell more assets to foreigners than they buy from them (capital surplus). Increasing inflows of investment and reducing the trade deficit cannot happen at the same time, hence the conclusion of policy incoherence.
4
Anger as Policy
A sense of grievance also permeates the America First narrative. Trump and several of his advisors see the US as a benevolent giant, having selflessly provided the resources, security and generosity of spirit to rebuild Western Europe, East Asia and the rest of the free world after the Second World War. Under the US security umbrella, the rest of the West took advantage of America’s kindness, took more from the till than they put in, skirted the rules to obtain artificial advantages in certain industries, adopted policies to promote their own interests at the expense of the US industrial base, became economic rivals and began to adopt views about foreign policy and geopolitics that weren’t in lockstep with the US government’s. Or so the story goes.
Expectations that other governments will acquiesce to US foreign and economic policy positions and accept the premise of American exceptionalism predominate this mindset. That the US isn’t treated with deference within the international trading system, especially by the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body, for its selfless leadership in establishing the rules and institutions of trade is an affront to Trump and his advisors. This premise is the well-spring of Trump’s outrage in learning that Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China would even consider retaliating against the US for imposing punitive tariffs on steel, aluminum and technology products.
The Trump administration’s concerns about China’s mercantilist industrial policies have some validity, but its approach to resolution has been an unmitigated disaster. The US doesn’t need China to agree to buy US$200 billion more US exports per year. Reducing the bilateral trade deficit is a silly, misguided objective.
Instead, the US should be pursuing deeper, enforceable commitments from China that it will operate within the letter and the spirit of the rules-based trading system. The way to do that is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with like-minded governments and demonstrate to Beijing that certain behavior won’t be tolerated. Instead, the Trump administration has done the opposite. It pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade accord, it picked fights with allies by hitting them with steel and aluminum tariffs, it transgressed WTO rules to impose sanctions unilaterally and it isolated the US as an international scofflaw. These missteps must be reversed, if that’s still possible.
Those who subscribe to Trump’s points of view — that trade is an “Us versus Them” proposition — probably think that the president is doing the right thing in subverting the institutions of global trade and provoking trade wars. More sycophantic supporters consider Trump’s strategy to be ingenious. Apologists who know better say that the president is merely fulfilling his campaign promises — and how refreshing is it that a politician is making good on his promises! All are complicit in the unenlightened, provocative and possibly unhinged trade policy that Trump has wrought.
