纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英为什么拜登不想让美国人购买廉价中国电动汽车

President Biden wants more of America’s cars and trucks to run on electricity, not gas. His administration has pushed that goal on multiple fronts, including strict new regulations of auto emissions and lavish new subsidies to help American consumers take as much as $7,500 off the cost of a new electric vehicle.

拜登总统希望美国更多的汽车和卡车使用电力，而不是汽油。他的政府从多个方面推动这一目标，包括严格的汽车排放新法规，以及慷慨的新补贴，让美国消费者在每辆新电动汽车上少花高达7500美元。

Mr. Biden’s aides agree that electric vehicles — which retail for more than $53,000 on average in the United States — would sell even faster here if they were less expensive. As it happens, there is a wave of new electric vehicles that are significantly cheaper than the ones customers can currently buy in the United States. They are proving extremely popular in Europe.

拜登的助手们一致认为，在美国平均零售价超过5.3万美元的电动汽车如果能够更便宜一些，应该会更畅销。然而此时此刻，有一批新型电动汽车比消费者目前在美国能买到的电动汽车便宜得多。事实证明，它们在欧洲非常受欢迎。

But the president and his team do not want Americans to buy these cheap cars, which retail elsewhere for as little as $10,000, because they are made in China. That’s true even though a surge of low-cost imported electric vehicles might help drive down car prices overall, potentially helping Mr. Biden in his re-election campaign at a time when inflation remains voters’ top economic concern.

但总统和他的团队不希望美国人购买这些在其他地方零售价低至1万美元的廉价汽车，因为它们是中国制造的。这是真的，尽管低成本进口电动汽车的激增可能有助于拉低整体汽车价格，在通胀仍是选民最关心的经济问题之际，可能有助于拜登的连任竞选。

Instead, the president is taking steps to make Chinese electric vehicles prohibitively expensive, in large part to protect American automakers. Mr. Biden signed an executive action earlier this month that quadruples tariffs on those cars to 100 percent.

相反，总统正在采取措施，让中国电动汽车的价格高到令人望而却步，这在很大程度上是为了保护美国汽车制造商。拜登本月早些时候签署了一项行政命令，将这些汽车的关税提高了三倍，达到100%。

Those tariffs will put many potential Chinese imports at a significant cost disadvantage to electric vehicles made in America. But some models, like the discount BYD Seagull, could still cost less than some American rivals even after tariffs, which is one reason Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and some other Democrats have called on Mr. Biden to ban Chinese E.V. imports entirely.

这些关税将使许多潜在的中国进口产品同美国制造的电动汽车相比处于明显的价格劣势。但即便是在加征关税之后，打折的比亚迪海鸥等车型的价格可能仍然低于一些美国竞争对手，这也是俄亥俄州参议员谢罗德·布朗和其他一些民主党人呼吁拜登完全禁止从中国进口电动汽车的原因之一。

The apparent clash between climate concerns and American manufacturing has upset some environmentalists and liberal economists, who say the country and the world would be better off if Mr. Biden welcomed the importation of low-cost, low-emission technologies to fight climate change.

气候问题与美国制造业之间的明显冲突让一些环保主义者和自由派经济学家感到不安，他们表示，如果拜登欢迎进口低成本、低排放的技术来应对气候变化，美国和世界将会受益更多。

Mr. Biden and his aides reject that critique. They say the president’s efforts to restrict Chinese electric cars and other clean-technology imports are an important counter to illegal and harmful trade practices being carried out by Beijing.

拜登及其助手驳斥了这种批评。他们说，总统限制中国电动汽车和其他清洁技术进口，是对北京正在实施的非法和有害的贸易行为的重要反击。

And they insist that Mr. Biden’s trade approach will ultimately benefit American jobs and national security — along with the planet.

他们坚持认为，拜登的贸易策略最终将有利于美国的就业和国家安全——以及整个地球。

Here are the policy and political considerations driving Mr. Biden’s attempt to shield American producers from Chinese competition.

以下是促使拜登试图保护美国生产商免受中国竞争的政策和政治考虑。

Denying Beijing a new monopoly

不让北京获得新的垄断地位

China already dominates key clean-energy manufacturing in areas like solar cells and batteries. Mr. Biden’s aides want to prevent it from gaining monopolies in similar industries, like electric vehicles, for several reasons.

中国已经在太阳能电池等关键清洁能源制造领域占据主导地位。拜登的助手们希望阻止它在电动汽车等类似行业获得垄断，原因有几个。

They include climate concerns. Administration officials say Chinese factories, which tend to be powered by fossil fuels like coal, produce more greenhouse gas emissions than American plants.

其中包括气候问题。政府官员表示，中国工厂往往使用煤炭等化石燃料，比美国工厂产生更多的温室气体排放。

There is also a central economic reason to deny China a monopoly: ensuring that electric cars and trucks will always be available, at competitive prices. The Covid-19 pandemic drove home the fragility of global supply chains, as critical products like semiconductors became hard to get from China and other Asian nations that the United States relied upon. Prices for consumer electronics and other products that relied on imported materials soared, fueling inflation.

拒绝中国垄断地位还有一个重要的经济原因：确保电动汽车和卡车始终以具有竞争力的价格供应。新冠疫情凸显了全球供应链的脆弱性，因为半导体等关键产品很难从美国依赖的中国和其他亚洲国家获得。依赖进口材料的消费电子产品和其他产品价格飙升，加剧了通货膨胀。

Biden officials want to avoid a similar scenario for electric vehicles. Concentrating the supply of E.V.s and other advanced green tech in China would risk “the world’s collective ability to have access to the technologies we need to be successful in a clean energy economy,” said Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden’s national climate adviser.

拜登的官员希望避免电动汽车出现类似的情况。拜登的国家气候顾问阿里·扎伊迪说，把电动汽车和其他先进绿色技术的供应集中在中国，可能会危及“全世界获得成功发展清洁能源经济所需技术的总体能力”。

Shoring up national security

巩固国家安全

Biden officials say they are not trying to bring the world’s entire electric vehicle supply chain to the United States. They are cutting deals with allies to supply minerals for advanced batteries, for example, and encouraging countries in Europe and elsewhere to subsidize their own domestic clean-tech production. But they are particularly worried about the security implications of a major rival like China dominating the space.

拜登的官员说，他们并不是要把全世界的电动汽车供应链都带到美国。例如，他们正在与盟国达成协议，为先进电池提供矿物，并鼓励欧洲和其他地区的国家补贴本国的清洁技术生产。但他们特别担心的是，像中国这样的主要竞争对手主宰这一领域所带来的安全影响。

The administration has initiated investigations into the risks of software and hardware of future imported smart cars — electric or otherwise — from China that could track Americans’ locations and report back to Beijing. Liberal economists also worry about the prospect of China cutting off access to new cars or key components of them, for strategic purposes.

政府已经开始调查未来从中国进口的智能汽车（电动汽车或其他）的软硬件风险，这些汽车可以跟踪美国人的位置并向北京报告。自由派经济学家也担心中国可能会出于战略目的而切断新车或关键零部件的出口。

Allowing China to dominate E.V. production risks repeating the longstanding economic and security challenges of gasoline-powered cars, said Elizabeth Pancotti, the director of special initiatives at the liberal Roosevelt Institute in Washington, which has cheered Mr. Biden’s industrial policy efforts.

华盛顿自由派机构罗斯福研究所对拜登的产业政策行动赞赏有加，其特别项目主任伊丽莎白·潘科蒂表示，允许中国主导电动汽车生产，可能会重蹈燃油动力汽车的覆辙，后者长期以来都面临着经济和安全方面的挑战。

Americans have struggled for decades to cope with decisions by often hostile oil-producing nations, which act as part of the OPEC cartel, to curtail production and raise gasoline prices. China could wreak similar havoc on the electric-car market if it drives other nations out of the business, she said.

几十年来，美国人一直在努力应对石油输出国组织中往往怀有敌意的产油国减产和提高油价的决定。她说，如果中国把其他国家赶出电动汽车市场，可能会对电动汽车市场造成类似的破坏。

If that happens, she said, “reversing that is going to be really difficult.”

她说，如果发生这种情况，“扭转局面将会非常困难。”

Biden needs the energy transition to create jobs

拜登需要能源转型来创造就业机会

There is no denying that politics also play a huge factor in Mr. Biden’s decisions. Simply put: He is promising that his climate program will create jobs — good-paying, blue-collar manufacturing jobs, including in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

不可否认，政治在拜登的决定中也发挥了巨大的作用。简而言之：他承诺他的气候计划将创造就业机会——高薪的蓝领制造业岗位，包括在宾夕法尼亚州和密歇根州等关键的摇摆州。

Mr. Biden is a staunch supporter of organized labor, and is counting on union votes to help win those states. He has pledged that the energy transition will boost union workers. He is betting their support for tariffs meant to protect American manufacturing jobs will dwarf any complaints from environmentalists who want faster progress on reducing emissions.

拜登是劳工组织的坚定支持者，他指望工会的选票来帮助他赢得这些州。他承诺，能源转型将促进工会工人的发展。他确信，他们会支持保护美国制造业就业的关税，并且压倒那些希望更快实现减排的环保主义者们的抱怨。

“One of the constituent groups in the Democratic Party that’s really highly organized, that gets people out to knock on doors, is the labor movement, more so than the environmental movement,” said Todd Vachon, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and the author of “Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice.”

“在民主党内部，真正组织严密、能派人上门拉票的选民群体之一是劳工团体，而不是环保团体，”罗格斯大学劳工研究教授、《清洁空气与好工作——美国劳工与争取气候正义的斗争》(Clean Air and Good Jobs：U.S. labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice)一书的作者托德·瓦尚说，

Those concerns have come into especially high relief given that many clean energy jobs are with young companies where workers aren’t unionized, he added.

他还说，许多清洁能源工作岗位是在年轻的公司，那里的工人没有加入工会，因此这样的顾虑就变得尤为明显。

Mr. Biden put those concerns front and center when announcing his tariff decision last week.

拜登上周宣布他的关税决定时，把这些顾虑放在了首要位置。

“Back in 2000, when cheap steel from China began to flood the market, U.S. steel towns across Pennsylvania and Ohio were hit hard,” he said at the White House. “Ironworkers and steelworkers in Pennsylvania and Ohio lost their jobs. I’m not going to let that happen again.”

“早在2000年，当来自中国的廉价钢铁开始涌入市场时，宾夕法尼亚州和俄亥俄州的美国钢铁城镇受到了沉重打击，”他在白宫表示。“宾夕法尼亚州和俄亥俄州的钢铁工人失去了工作。我不会让这种事情再次发生。”