FT社评：特朗普贸易举措“走错棋”

There is nothing that the attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos like better than a news event that fits a narrative and confirms a prejudice. Donald Trump, the showman in the White House, has obliged.

达沃斯世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)的与会者最喜欢的莫过于符合某种叙事、又证实某一偏见的新闻事件。白宫作秀大师唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)满足了他们。

On Monday Mr Trump announced emergency “safeguard” tariffs against imports of solar panels and washing machines, citing jobs being lost among American producers.

周一，特朗普宣布了针对进口太阳能电池板和洗衣机的紧急“保护性”关税，理由是它们让美国生产商流失了就业岗位。

The narrative is obvious: Mr Trump is following through on his promise to tear up the rule book and punish China for dumping cheap products on the American market, even at the risk of starting a trade war. That conclusion would, however, be mistaken. Mr Trump’s actions are foolish and counter-productive, to be sure. But they are neither wildly unusual nor, by themselves, desperately damaging. This particular decision says as much about the degree of destructive licence afforded by the US’s trade laws as it does about Mr Trump’s aggressive eccentricities.

叙事是显而易见的：特朗普正在履行撕毁规则、就中国在美国市场倾销廉价产品惩罚中国的承诺，甚至不惜冒着挑起贸易战的风险。然而，这个结论是错误的。毫无疑问，特朗普的做法是愚蠢和适得其反的。但这些做法既不是极不寻常，就其本身而言，也并非极其有害。这一特别决定，不但体现了特朗普那咄咄逼人的怪癖，而且道出了美国贸易法所能承受的破坏性任意妄为的程度。

It is important to be accurate about the tariffs announced on Monday. Rather than being an arbitrary unilateral initiative, they employ an existing (if rarely used) provision in US trade law and largely follow advice from the independent official agency, the International Trade Commission. Nor are they targeted against China: they affect imports from a range of countries.

准确解读周一公布的关税措施是很重要的。这些措施并非武断的单边行动，而是援引美国贸易法中既有(尽管很少使用)的条款，并在很大程度上遵循了独立的官方机构——国际贸易委员会(International Trade Commission)的建议。这些措施也不单单指向中国：从一系列国家进口的产品都会受影响。

The duties on domestic washing machines, for example, will hurt mainly South Korean exporters. And as “safeguards”, rather than anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties, they do not involve judgments about unfair pricing or subsidy by a foreign company or government.

例如，对进口洗衣机征缴的关税将主要损害韩国出口商。而作为“保护性”、而不是反倾销或反补贴关税，并不需要对外国企业或政府的不公平定价或补贴做出判定。

We have been here before, under the previous two presidents. In 2009, using a tool specific to China, Barack Obama put safeguard tariffs on tyres. In 2002 George W Bush did the same more broadly to imports of steel. In both cases, critics howled that the sky was about to fall in. In both cases, the tariffs served a relatively short-term political goal of being seen to protect a particular domestic industry. Neither presaged a general surge of protectionism, still less a global trade war.

前两位总统都曾经这么做过。2009年，巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)使用一项专门针对中国的工具，对轮胎征收了保护性关税。2002年，小布什(George W Bush)对钢铁进口征收了更广泛的保护性关税。那两次，批评人士高声嚷道，天空即将坍塌。那两次，关税都服务于一个相对短期的政治目标——让自己看起来在保护国内某个特定产业。那两次，保护性关税并未引起普遍的保护主义浪潮，更不用说挑起全球贸易战。

With regard to trade, Mr Trump is a far more reckless and misguided president than either Mr Obama or Mr Bush. He has the opportunity in the weeks and months ahead to create more serious damage, with separate investigations into alleged Chinese abuses of intellectual property rights and into whether aluminium imports constitute a threat to national security. Those could more readily be used as broader tools to punish individual trading partners for perceived misdemeanours and to protect whole swaths of domestic industry on bogus security grounds.

在贸易方面，比起奥巴马和小布什，特朗普是一个鲁莽和迷糊得多的总统。在未来几周和几个月里，通过对中国涉嫌侵犯知识产权、以及进口铝是否对国家安全构成威胁进行单独调查，他有机会造成更严重的损害。这些可能更容易被用作更广泛的工具，以惩罚美国认定的个别贸易伙伴的不当行为，并以虚假的安全理由保护国内所有产业。

Still, it does need to be said that most of the administration’s actions on trade so far have remained in the realm of the wrong-headed rather than the absurd, and that there has been some degree of calibration in their use. The solar tariffs, for example, are set below the maximum level permitted, and their level will be reduced in coming years. There appears to be at least some recognition of the damage that will be done to the US’s big solar-installation industry by suddenly increasing the price of its inputs.

尽管如此，确实需要指出的是，美国政府迄今大多数贸易行动仍停留在想法错误、但还不至于荒谬的层面，而且在实施过程中也有一定程度的调整。例如，太阳能电池板关税被设定在允许的最高水平之下，并且在未来几年将会降低。他们似乎至少有一些认识到了突然提高投入价格将对美国庞大太阳能安装行业造成的损害。

What one should think of Mr Trump’s trade policy depends on one’s expectations. Compared to previous administrations, it is seriously worrying. Compared to the extraordinary rhetoric about across-the-board 45 per cent tariffs he articulated before his election, it is a blessed relief. The world trading system is not infinitely resilient. It can, however, absorb blows like the one Mr Trump dealt it this week.

人们应该如何看待特朗普的贸易政策取决于各自的期望。与前几届政府相比，他的贸易政策是非常令人担忧的。与他在当选之前提出的关于全面征收45%关税的惊人言论相比，他的贸易政策让人感到欣慰。世界贸易体系并非有无限弹性。然而，它可以吸收特朗普本周发出的冲击。