美国保护主义可能引发数字贸易战

National security is the new cover for US protectionism. President Donald Trump signed his steel and aluminium tariffs under that false guise. But metal bending is not the most worrisome new area for protectionism. Trade in physical goods and services has been flat for years, but digital flows of commerce and information have risen by 45-fold in the past decade, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. The trade war to fear is not in physical commodities, but in technology, which economic nationalists hope to ringfence in order to stave off competitive threats from countries such as China.

国家安全是美国保护主义的新幌子。美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)在这种虚伪的幌子下签署了命令，对美国进口的钢铁和铝征收高额关税。但金属并不是保护主义最令人担忧的新领域。据麦肯锡全球研究院(McKinsey Global Institute)称，实物商品与服务的贸易多年来一直持平，但过去10年商业和信息的数字流动增长了45倍。真正该担心的贸易战并不在实体商品领域，而在技术领域，经济民族主义者希望将技术圈护起来，以避免来自中国等国家的竞争威胁。

The US has already launched a so-called Section 301 investigation. The results are due this summer, but it will probably result in stricter barriers on Chinese investment in American data and IT. That could shut out companies such as, say, Tencent, or result in new tariffs on a wider variety of Chinese products — or even usher in new visa rules for Chinese immigrants.

美国已经启动了所谓的“301条款”(Section 301)调查。调查结果将于今年夏天公布，很可能会给中国对美国数据及信息产业的投资带来更严苛的壁垒。这可能会将腾讯(Tencent)等企业拒之门外，或者导致美国对更广泛的中国产品征收新的关税——甚至针对中国移民引入新的签证规则。

Last week, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US announced it had launched a review into Singapore-domiciled chipmaker Broadcom’s bid to purchase Qualcomm, a leading US semiconductor business. The move followed pressure from Texas senator John Cornyn and California representative Duncan Hunter, who have each received more than $15,000 in donations from Qualcomm’s political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission records. Treasury secretary Steve Mnunchin, who chairs Cfius, said last week that the US was “fully prepared” to use its powers to prevent the deal should it threaten national security.

美国外国投资委员会(Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, 简称CFIUS)上周宣布，他们已对新加坡芯片制造商博通(Broadcom)收购美国领先的半导体企业高通(Qualcomm)的交易展开审查。(美国总统特朗普已经封杀了博通敌意收购高通的交易，称他这么做是为了保护美国的国家安全。——编者注)此前，德克萨斯州参议员约翰•科宁(John Cornyn)和加州众议员邓肯•亨特(Duncan Hunter)向CFIUS施加了压力，联邦选举委员会(Federal Election Commission)的记录显示，他们两人都收到了高通政治行动委员会超过15000美元的捐款。美国财长、CFIUS主席史蒂文•姆努钦(Steven Mnuchin)上周表示，美国“已做好充分准备”，如果这笔交易威胁到国家安全，将动用权力阻止。

The arguments being made against the deal range from worries that Broadcom would shrink Qualcomm’s investment in crucial areas such as 5G, to fears that the US cannot remain digitally competitive and secure if a Singaporean company owns Qualcomm. But that fails to take into account the way in which both the US tech industry and the administration itself currently operate.

反对这笔交易的理由包括，担心博通会缩减高通在5G等关键领域的投资，以及若高通被一家新加坡公司所有，美国将无法在数字领域保持竞争力与安全性。但这个理由没有考虑到美国科技产业及政府自身目前的运作方式。

Cfius frets that Broadcom, which has lined up $106bn in debt financing from private equity groups Silver Lake, KKR and CVC for the deal, will take a short-term profit approach and cut Qualcomm’s rich research and development budget, which is 20 per cent of revenues. That is a legitimate worry: private equity has a history of reducing R&D when the debt loads are high. Cfius’s theory is that if Qualcomm is starved of investment, the US will lose a “national champion” in the tech race against China.

CFIUS担忧的是，已从私人股本集团银湖资本(Silver Lake)、KKR与CVC获得1060亿美元债务融资的博通，会采取短期获利策略并削减高通的巨额研发预算，这部分预算占高通营收的20%。CFIUS的担忧是合理的：当债务负担很高时，私人股本向来会缩减研发开支。CFIUS的理论是，如果高通缺乏投资，美国将在与中国的科技竞赛中与“冠军头衔”失之交臂。

Yet this ignores the fact that Qualcomm has “strategic collaborations and interests in China that dwarf those of Broadcom”, according to Stacy Rasgon, a Bernstein semiconductor analyst. Many big US tech companies have substantial interests in China, even though some of them have been privately jumping on the nationalisticbandwagon in recent months. They have been using the “better us than China” argument when lobbying against the groundswell of enthusiasm for additional regulation of the technology sector on a variety of fronts, from antitrust to privacy.

然而，据伯恩斯坦公司(Bernstein)的半导体产业分析师斯泰西•拉斯冈(Stacy Rasgon)称，这种担忧忽略了一个事实，即高通“在中国拥有的战略合作关系与利益远超博通”。美国许多大型科技公司在中国拥有可观的利益，尽管近几个月其中一些公司私下里一直在追赶民族主义的浪潮。在反对对技术行业实行从反垄断到隐私权等多方面的额外监管时，“我们总比中国企业强”一直是这些企业惯用的理由。

The problem is that neither the US tech industry nor the government can have it both ways. In the 1980s, under the Ronald Reagan administration, there was briefly a push for a more cohesive industrial policy around technology, but it was ditched as soon as George H W Bush took office. Then, in the late 1990s, the Department of Defense worried that the Japanese were making 92 per cent of the flat panel displays used in military equipment. It launched an effort to create a homegrown industry for this technology. Billions of dollars and several years later, Japanese firms had a 96 per cent market share. Today’s worry, of course, is that we start with tariffs on aluminium and steel and end up in a digital trade war that cannot be won.

问题是，无论是美国的科技行业还是美国政府，都无法两者兼得。上世纪80年代，在罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)执政时期，曾短暂推行更具凝聚力的科技产业政策，但老布什(George H W Bush)一上台就抛弃了这种政策。后来，在90年代末，美国国防部(Department of Defense)担心日本正在制造92%的用于军事设备的平板显示器，于是努力为这项技术创造了一个本土产业。几年过去了，美国花了几十亿美元，日本企业却占据了96%的市场份额。当然，如今我们担忧的是，从对铝和钢铁征收关税开始，我们最终将陷入一场无法取胜的数字贸易战。

The government is right to want to look out for national security interests and to have a hand in how strategically important sectors are managed. But protectionism is not the way to do it.

政府希望维护国家安全利益，并参与管理战略意义重大的行业是正确的。但保护主义并不是实现这一目标的途径。

The US government has a terrific record in terms of funding blue sky research that results in huge economic value for the private sector — touchscreen technology, GPS and the internet itself came out of the Pentagon. We should be bolstering rather than cutting funding for such research, and perhaps even allowing the public sector to take a greater cut of the profits if the research is commercialised, as Nordic countries and Israel do. That would help offset popular criticism that results when companies such as Apple or Google or Qualcomm, after benefiting greatly from publicly funded basic research, end up stashing much of their profits offshore.

美国政府在资助蓝天研究方面有着了不起的记录，为私营部门带来了巨大的经济价值——触摸屏技术、GPS以及本身即诞生于五角大楼的互联网技术。我们应增加而非削减这类研究的资金，甚至在这类研究商业化的情况下，允许公共部门获取更多的利润，就像北欧诸国与以色列所做的那样。这将有助于减轻舆论的批评——苹果(Apple)、谷歌(Google)或高通等公司在从公共资助的基础研究中获得巨大利益后，最终却把大部分利润藏在海外。

It is true that China protects its own tech sector. But it is also true that America has homegrown tech troubles. Rather than slapping tariffs on foreign goods or swallowing the claim that companies doing business with economic adversaries are somehow national champions that will ensure state security, we should take a closer look at our own digital ecosystem. Large US incumbents are crushing innovation. Educational reform is desperately need to train workers for jobs where they will not be displaced by robots.

的确，中国也在保护自己的科技产业。但美国也确实存在着本土的科技问题。与其对国外商品征收关税，或拒绝承认与经济对手做生意的公司在某种程度上其实是能够确保国家安全的领袖企业，不如让我们好好反观一下自己的数字生态系统。美国的大企业正在破坏创新。美国迫切需要教育改革，以培训劳动者从事那些不会被机器人取代的工作。

We can best bolster growth not by protecting US companies from overseas buyers, but by investing in infrastructure. Addressing those issues is the right way to protect national security.

促进增长的最好办法不是保护美国企业不被海外买家收购，而是投资于基础设施。解决这些问题才是保护国家安全的正确途径。