纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英美国拥抱廉价中国制造的时代已经终结

For the first two decades of the 21st century, many consumer products on America’s store shelves got less expensive. A wave of imports from China and other emerging economies helped push down the cost of video games, T-shirts, dining tables, home appliances and more.

在21世纪的前二十年里，美国商店货架上的许多消费品变得更便宜。来自中国和其他新兴经济体的进口浪潮帮助压低了电子游戏机、T恤、餐桌、家用电器等产品的成本。

Those imports drove some American factories out of business, and they cost more than a million workers their jobs. Discount stores and online retailers, like Walmart and Amazon, flourished selling low-cost goods made overseas. But voters rebelled. Stung by shuttered factories, cratered industries and prolonged wage stagnation, Americans in 2016 elected a president who vowed to hit back at China on trade. Four years later, they elected another one.

这些进口产品使一些美国工厂倒闭，100多万工人失去了工作。沃尔玛和亚马逊等折扣店和在线零售商靠着销售海外制造的低价商品大赚其钱。但选民们做出了反抗。在工厂倒闭、工业萧条和工资长期停滞的刺激下，美国人在2016年选出了一位发誓要在贸易方面反击中国的总统。四年后，他们又选了这样一位。

In separate but overlapping efforts, former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden have sought to revive and protect American factories by making it more expensive to buy Chinese goods. They have taxed imports in legacy industries that were hollowed out over the last quarter-century, like clothes and appliances, and newer ones that are struggling to grow amid global competition with China, like solar panels.

前总统特朗普和拜登总统分别采取了一些相同的行动，试图通过提高购买中国商品的成本来重振和保护美国的工厂。他们对过去四分之一世纪里被掏空的传统行业（如服装和电器）以及在与中国的全球竞争中难以增长的新兴行业（如太阳能电池板）的进口产品征税。

Mr. Biden’s decision on Tuesday to codify and escalate tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump made clear that the United States has closed out a decades-long era that embraced trade with China and prized the gains of lower-cost products over the loss of geographically concentrated manufacturing jobs. A single tariff rate embodies that closure: a 100 percent tax on Chinese electric vehicles, which start at less than $10,000 each and have surged into showrooms around the world, but have struggled to crack government barriers to the U.S. market.

拜登决定将特朗普征收的关税纳入法律并对其进行升级，这清楚地表明美国已经结束了一个长达数十年的时代，这个时代拥抱对华贸易，重视低成本产品带来的收益，而不是地理位置集中的制造业工作岗位的流失。只从一个关税税率就可以看出这个时代的结束：对中国电动汽车征收100%的关税，这些起价不到一万美元的汽车已经涌入世界各地的销售厅，但一直难以突破政府为美国市场设置的壁垒。

Democrats and Republicans once joined forces to engage economically with Beijing, driven by a theory that America would benefit from outsourcing production to countries that could manufacture certain goods more cheaply, in part by paying their workers low wages. Economists knew some American workers would lose their jobs, but they said the economy would gain overall by offering consumers low-cost goods and freeing up companies to invest in higher-value industries where the United States had an innovation advantage.

民主党人和共和党人曾一度联手与北京进行经济接触，他们的理论是，美国将受益于将生产外包给那些能够以更低成本生产某些商品的国家，部分原因是这些国家的工人工资较低。经济学家们知道，一些美国工人将失去工作，但他们表示，通过向消费者提供低成本商品，并让企业能够投资于美国具有创新优势的高价值行业，整体经济将从中受益。

The parties are now competing to sever those ties. Lawmakers have taken increasingly hard lines on China’s labor practices, intellectual property theft from foreign businesses and generous subsidies for factories that produce far more than Chinese consumers can buy.

现在，两党都在竞相切断与中国的联系。议员们对中国的劳工行为、窃取外国企业的知识产权，以及为产量远超中国消费者购买力的工厂提供慷慨补贴等问题，采取了越来越强硬的立场。

It is unclear what new era of policymaking will emerge from those political incentives: Mr. Biden’s brand of strategic industrial policy, Mr. Trump’s retrenchment to a more self-contained domestic economy, or something else entirely.

目前还不清楚这些政治激励会带来什么样的决策新时代：拜登式的战略产业政策，特朗普向更加自给自足的国内经济转型，抑或完全不同的东西。

It is also not clear whether the American public, still reeling from the country’s most rapid burst of inflation in 40 years, will tolerate the pains that could accompany the transition.

同样不清楚的是，仍在为40年来最迅速的通货膨胀所困扰的美国公众能否忍受转型带来的痛苦。

“The old consensus has been blown apart, and a new one has not arisen,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped lead the pioneering research into what has come to be known as the China Shock of the early 2000s, when China’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization helped wipe out manufacturing jobs across the developed world.

“旧的共识被打破了，新的共识还没有形成，”麻省理工学院经济学家戴维·奥托说。他参与主持了对本世纪初所谓“中国冲击”的开创性研究，当时中国加入世界贸易组织，导致发达国家的制造业就业岗位大量流失。

But consumers and voters, Mr. Autor cautioned, “can’t have it both ways. You can make a trade-off. All the world is trade-offs. If you want to get to the point where the U.S. maintains and regains leadership in these technological areas, you’re going to have to pay more. And it’s not clear it’ll work.”

但奥托警告说，消费者和选民“不可能两全其美”。“你要做出取舍。整个世界都在做取舍。如果你想让美国在这些技术领域保持并且重新获得领导地位，你就必须付出更多。即便这样也不见得一定能成。”

Despite their mutual embrace of forms of protectionism, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are offering voters contrasting views of how the American economy should engage with China in their rematch election.

尽管拜登和特朗普都支持各种形式的保护主义，但在他们的第二次竞选角逐中，关于美国经济应当如何与中国打交道，两人向选民提出了截然不同的观点。

Mr. Trump wants to tear down the bridges of commerce between the world’s two largest economies and dramatically restrict trade overall. He has pledged to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports, by revoking the “most favored nation” trade status that Congress voted to bestow on China at the end of the Clinton administration, and ban some Chinese goods entirely. He would impose new taxes on all imports from around the world.

特朗普希望拆除世界上最大的两个经济体之间的商业桥梁，并在整体上大幅限制贸易。他承诺提高所有中国进口商品的关税，取消国会在克林顿政府末期投票给予中国的“最惠国”贸易地位，并且完全禁止一些中国商品。他将对来自世界各地的所有进口商品征收新税。

Mr. Trump bluntly asserts China will pay the cost of those tariffs, not consumers, though detailed economic studies contradict him. But Robert Lighthizer, his former trade representative who remains an influential voice in Mr. Trump’s trade discussions, told New York Times reporters late last year that it was worth trading higher consumer prices for increased manufacturing employment.

特朗普直言不讳地声称，为这些关税的付出代价的将是中国，而不是美国消费者，尽管有详尽的经济学研究得出了相悖的结论。但他的前贸易代表、在特朗普的贸易讨论中仍有影响力的罗伯特·莱特希泽去年年底对《纽约时报》记者表示，用更高的消费价格换取增加制造业就业是值得的。

“There’s a group of people who think that consumption is the end,” Mr. Lighthizer said. “And my view is production is the end, and safe and happy communities are the end. You should be willing to pay a price for that.”

“有些人认为消费就是目的，”莱特希泽说。“我的观点是，生产才是目的，安全和幸福的社区才是目的。你应该愿意为此付出代价。”

Mr. Biden rejects Mr. Trump’s proposals as too broad and costly. He wants to build a protective fortress around strategic industries like clean energy and semiconductors, using tariffs and other regulations. Mr. Biden is also showering companies in those sectors with billions in government subsidies, including for green-energy technologies through the Inflation Reduction Act.

拜登拒绝接受特朗普的方案，称其过于宽泛，成本太高。他希望利用关税和其他法规，在清洁能源和半导体等战略产业周围建立一个保护性堡垒。拜登还向这些行业的公司提供了数十亿美元的政府补贴，包括通过《降低通货膨胀法》为绿色能源技术提供的补贴。

“Investment must be paired with trade enforcement to make sure the comeback we are seeing in communities around the country is not undercut by a flood of unfairly underpriced exports from China,” Lael Brainard, who directs the White House National Economic Council, said in a speech on Thursday. “We have learned from the past. There can be no second China Shock here in America.”

“投资必须与贸易执法相结合，以确保我们在全国各地看到的复苏不会受到中国不公平低价出口产品的冲击，”白宫国家经济委员会主任莱尔·布雷纳德周四在演讲中表示。“我们从过去吸取了教训。在美国，不会有第二次中国冲击。”

Many economists who continue to favor less restricted trade with China have criticized both candidates’ plans, and not simply because they risk raising prices for American shoppers. They say Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s policies could slow economic growth. Cutting off Chinese competition, they say, could force companies and consumers to spend money on artificially expensive domestic goods, instead of on new and innovative products that would create new industries and new jobs.

许多继续支持减少对华贸易限制的经济学家批评了两位候选人的计划，不仅仅是因为它们有可能提高物价。他们表示，特朗普和拜登的政策可能会减缓经济增长。他们说，切断来自中国的竞争，可能会迫使企业和消费者把钱花在人为造成的的昂贵国内商品上，而不是花在能够创造新产业和新就业机会的新型创新产品上。

“We’re going to hurt our productivity by massively overspending on these things,” said R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers under former President George W. Bush.

“在这些方面大规模过度支出，会损害我们的生产力，”哥伦比亚大学经济学家、曾在前总统乔治·W·布什任内领导白宫经济顾问委员会的格伦·哈伯德说。

Some Democrats say Mr. Biden’s best hope of building a lasting, successful China trade policy is by spending more, including potentially another round of subsidies for semiconductors and other high-tech manufacturing, and by going further on enforcement. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, a career-long China and trade hawk in Congress, has pushed Mr. Biden to ban Chinese electric vehicles outright.

一些民主党人说，要建立持久而成功的对华贸易政策，拜登的首选做法应该是增加支出，包括可能对半导体和其他高科技制造业进行新一轮补贴，并进一步加强执法。俄亥俄州民主党参议员谢罗德·布朗一直是国会中对华和贸易问题上的鹰派，他敦促拜登彻底禁止来自中国的电动汽车。

Jennifer Harris, a former Biden aide who now leads the Economy and Society Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, has pushed the administration to couple its industrial policy spending with even stricter rules on what the recipients of that money can do with it. She wants stronger mandates for domestic automakers to shift to electric vehicles, for example, and stricter curbs on stock buybacks to force companies receiving government grants, like semiconductor manufacturers, to invest more in research and development.

拜登的前助手、现任威廉和弗洛拉·休利特基金会经济与社会倡议问题负责人珍妮弗·哈里斯敦促政府将产业政策支出与更严格的规定结合起来，限制资金接受者对这笔钱的用途。例如，她希望加强对国内汽车制造商向电动汽车转型的强制要求，并对股票回购施加更严格的限制，以迫使半导体制造商等接受政府资助的公司加大研发投入。

“This begins the much harder chapter that I think is much less attempted in U.S. history of industrial policy,” Ms. Harris said: “Making industry really prove it out.”

“这开启了一个更加艰难的篇章，我认为在美国产业政策的历史上，这方面的尝试要少得多，”哈里斯说。“让产业真正经受住考验。”

Voters will sour on those efforts, she added, if Mr. Biden’s policies do not help quickly drive down prices of Made-in-the-U.S.A. products. “Americans want it both ways, and they’re going to get grumpy when prices go up,” she said.

她还说，如果拜登的政策不能帮助迅速压低美国制造的价格，选民们就会对这些努力感到不满。她说：“美国人希望两者兼顾，当物价上涨时，他们会变得暴躁。”

Polls show voters are already extremely grumpy about price increases, which are related to supply-chain snarls and government and central bank stimulus as the world emerged from the Covid-19 recession.

民意调查显示，选民已经对物价上涨非常不满，这与供应链混乱以及政府和央行在全球摆脱新冠衰退之际的刺激措施有关。

Inflation concerns are weighing on Mr. Biden’s re-election chances. Current and former Biden aides are hopeful they will not also discredit Mr. Biden’s economic policy strategy, if he were to win a second term. Persistently higher prices from new tariffs could also hurt Mr. Trump’s approval, if he were to regain the White House.

对通胀的担忧正在影响拜登连任的机会。拜登的现任和前任助手们希望，如果拜登赢得连任，这些问题不会影响他的经济政策战略。如果特朗普再度入主白宫，新关税带来的价格持续上涨也可能损害他的支持率。

Those political questions are driving uncertainty about what the new era of China policy will ultimately settle into. Mr. Hubbard would like to see a retreat from protectionism and a re-embrace of what you might call more traditional views of trade policy: enforce global rules, invest heavily in national innovation to retain an edge, and when you do lose industries to a global rival, spend big to retrain the workers who are displaced so they can find new jobs.

这些政治问题给新时代的对华政策最终走向带来了不确定性。哈伯德希望看到保护主义的退却，重新采取所谓更传统的贸易政策观点：执行全球规则，大力投资于国家创新以保持优势，如果你的产业被全球竞争对手抢走，那就花大钱对失业工人进行再培训，使他们能够找到新工作。

He concedes there is little appetite in the American electorate for such a policy. So does Ms. Harris. “The idea that we’re just going to run this movie again, knowing the political fallout that came from the first round, is just complete suicide to me,” she said.

他承认美国选民对这样的政策兴趣不大。哈里斯也是这样认为。“明知第一轮选举带来的政治后果是什么，还要把同一部电影再放一遍，这在我看来简直是自杀，”她说。

Mr. Autor said that, economically speaking, he would not like to return to the previous era of China trade. He is generally complimentary of Mr. Biden’s industrial efforts, including his China policy, but says the president should “give up” on support for some sectors of the economy where China has driven costs extremely low, like solar cells.

奥托尔说，从经济角度讲，他不希望回到以前的对华贸易时代。他在总体上对拜登在产业方面的努力表示赞赏，包括他的对华政策，但他说，拜登应该“放弃”支持一些成本已经被中国压得极低的经济部门，比如太阳能电池。

His latest research warns of the economic perils of poorly designed trade policy, but it also explains why presidents might keep pursuing it. In a recent paper, written with several fellow economists, Mr. Autor found that Mr. Trump’s tariff-centered approach did not succeed in bringing many factory jobs back to America.

他的最新研究警告说，贸易政策设计不当会带来经济危险，但它也解释了为什么总统们可能会继续推行不当的政策。在最近与几位经济学家合著的一篇论文中，奥托发现，特朗普以关税为中心的做法并没有成功地将许多工厂工作岗位带回美国。

But, the economists found, the policy seemed to have won Mr. Trump and his party more votes.

但作者们发现，这项政策似乎为特朗普及其政党赢得了更多选票。