FT社评：保护主义浪潮是可以遏制的

Every year for a decade or more, there have been dire warnings that this — this! — is the year in which the dams of international governance will break, and a flood of protectionism will inundate the world economy. The 9/11 attacks, the sustained episode of Chinese currency intervention, the collapse of the Doha round, the global financial crisis. Each was expected to pose a severe threat to trade. Each was much less damaging than feared.

十多年来，每年都会出现可怕的警示，就在今年——就今年!——国际治理的大坝将决堤，保护主义的洪水将淹没世界经济。9•11袭击、中国持续的汇率干预、多哈回合(Doha Round)谈判失败以及全球金融危机。每一事件都曾被认为对贸易构成严重威胁。而每一事件造成的破坏其实都远不及人们担心的那样严重。

The election of Donald Trump, the most protectionist president since the Great Depression, is a greater threat than all of those. This year has seen Mr Trump abrogate one massive trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and force the renegotiation of another, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). He has escalated threats of unilateral action to reduce trade deficits and continued the slow strangulation of the one functioning part of the World Trade Organization.

唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)是自大萧条以来最具贸易保护主义色彩的总统，其当选对全球贸易造成的威胁堪称空前。今年，特朗普退出了大规模的《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》(Trans-Pacific Partnership)，又迫使《北美自由贸易协定》(North American Free Trade Agreement，简称NAFTA)重新启动谈判。他令采取单边行动削减贸易赤字的威胁加剧，并继续缓慢扼杀世界贸易组织(WTO)还在发挥作用的那个部分。

It would be a steel-nerved gambler who bet against Mr Trump’s economically nationalist rhetoric translating into reality. But the actual imposition of seriously damaging protectionist actions has, at least, been deferred until 2018. And the imminent threats fall short of all-out trade war.

只有神经坚强的赌徒，才会赌特朗普的经济民族主义口号不会转化为现实。然而，具有严重破坏力的保护主义行动至少在2018年以前都不会实际执行。而且迫在眉睫的威胁不等于全面的贸易战。

Next year will see Mr Trump being handed a whole range of implements to bash China and other trading partners with. National security investigations into aluminium and steel imports; a separate complaint about unfair pricing of aluminium sheeting from China that the US administration, unusually, initiated itself; “special safeguard” investigations into solar cells from China and washing machines from South Korea. All these give the administration the ability to impede imports.

明年人们将看到一整套用来攻击中国与美国其他贸易伙伴的工具被交付到特朗普手中。对进口铝材及钢材的国家安全调查;由美国政府自己发起的(这种做法不同寻常)对进口自中国的铝板不公平定价的投诉;对中国制造的太阳能电池和韩国生产的洗衣机展开的“特别防卫”(special safeguard)调查。这些手段都将使美国政府有能力阻碍进口。

But these are not the across-the-board 45 per cent import tariffs on China that Mr Trump was suggesting a year ago. A new and aggressive use of existing trade tools against imports would be self-destructive but, on the scale proposed, not catastrophic.

但这些跟特朗普一年前提出的对中国实行45%的全面进口关税都不可同日而语。重新积极使用现有的贸易工具来对付进口将是自毁行为，但从拟议的规模来看，却并不是灾难性的。

The most focused part of US trade policy has been driven by the most experienced senior figure in the administration, Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative. Apart from the pursuit of Nafta renegotiations, Mr Lighthizer, a longtime critic of the WTO’s dispute settlement process, has intensified the existing US position of blocking appointments to the organisation’s appellate body in protest at what he regards as judicial over-reach.

美国贸易政策中最受关注的部分是由美国政府中最有经验的高级官员、美国贸易代表罗伯特•莱特希泽(Robert Lighthizer)推动的。莱特希泽长期以来一直批评世界贸易组织(WTO)的纠纷解决机制，除推动《北美自由贸易协定》(NAFTA)的重新谈判以外，他还强化了美国现有立场——通过阻止对WTO上诉法官的任命，来抗议在莱特希泽看来的逾越司法管辖权行为。

Mr Lighthizer insists he is not trying to destroy the WTO, only to return it to its proper limited function. He may be sincere. Yet — apart from the intellectually dishonest appointment of judges who promise to vote a particular way, particularly on granting Washington more freedom to impose anti-dumping duties — it is hard to see exactly how the tension is likely to be resolved. Mr Lighthizer has spent 2017 assiduously backing the WTO into a corner. Next year will see when and how he intends to give it a route out.

莱特希泽坚称，他并不是在试图摧毁WTO，只是让WTO退回其原本的有限职能。他或许会言而有信。然而，我们很难想象这种矛盾可能如何得到解决——除了通过以如下这种巧妙方式食言来解决：任命允诺会以特定方式投票、尤其是在赋予美国更大自由去征收反倾销税的问题上倒向美国的裁判官。在2017年，莱特希泽一直不遗余力地把WTO逼入角落。他打算何时以及如何给WTO一条出路，明年将会见分晓。

Being optimistic about the global trading system in 2018 is largely a question of lowering expectations. Those who were hoping that the status quo ante Trump would continue will be seriously disappointed. Those who feared a protectionist apocalypse may be slightly relieved. The one bright spot of 2017 was that other big trading powers, particularly the EU, resisted the temptation to follow the US down the protectionist route, signing new trade deals and generally trying to keep the system going.

要对2018年的全球贸易体系抱乐观态度，需要降低期望。那些希望特朗普现在这种没有火力全开的状态能够持续下去的人们将会非常失望。那些担心保护主义末世即将降临的人们或许将稍微松一口气。2017年的一个亮点是其他大的贸易国家和地区，尤其是欧盟(EU)，抵制住了跟随美国走保护主义路线的诱惑，签署了新的贸易协定，并且基本上一直在努力维持贸易体系的运作。

The focus for trade policymakers in 2018 should be mainly about damage limitation. Another year in which the protectionist wolf does not appear will count as a victory.

在2018年，贸易政策制定者应该把重点放在控制损失上。人们喊了多少年“狼来了”，如果保护主义这条狼在2018年也没有来，就算得上是一场胜利了。