特朗普的貿易代表與中國面臨的困境

SHANGHAI — As a top trade official, he limited the Japanese cars and steel coming into the United States. He halted talks with China on a deal that would encourage investment between the two countries. And he tried to give American exporters an edge with special tax breaks.

上海——他曾作爲最高貿易官員對日本汽車和鋼鐵進入美國加以限制。他曾中斷過與中國的談判，而該談判將會達成一項促進兩國間投資的協議。他曾試圖通過特殊稅收減免，讓美國出口商獲得優勢。

When it comes to problems troubling working-class Americans and manufacturers, Robert Lighthizer, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for trade representative, has historically blamed the United States’ trading partners, advocating aggressive retaliation for what he regards as widespread abuses of free-trade rules.

在涉及到困擾工薪階級美國人和製造商的問題時，候任總統唐納德·J·特朗普的美國貿易代表提名人羅伯特·萊特希澤(Robert Lighthizer)一貫的做法是指責美國的貿易伙伴，對那些在他看來是大範圍濫用自由貿易規則的行爲，他主張給予其強有力的報復。

It is a philosophy that he developed in the 1980s as a deputy United States trade representative and fine-tuned in the decades-long career that followed as the main trade lawyer for the American steel industry. Now he appears ready to train that focus sharply on China.

這種處世態度，是他在20世紀80年代擔任美國副貿易代表時形成的，在後來作爲美國鋼鐵行業主要貿易律師幾十年的職業生涯中，得到了進一步完善。現在，他看來已經準備好要把精力集中到對付中國上來。

“It seems clear that the U.S. manufacturing crisis is related to our trade with China,” Mr. Lighthizer said in testimony to a congressional commission in 2010.

“這看來很明顯，美國的製造業危機同我們與中國的貿易有關，”2010年，萊特希澤在一個國會委員會的聽證會上說。

Over the years, Mr. Lighthizer has consistently taken the position that foreign countries are subsidizing their exporters while quietly but systematically blocking imports to protect jobs in their own countries. His answer is to pursue a long list of trade measures limiting America’s imports — even if those actions may be barely permissible, if at all, under World Trade Organization rules.

多年來，萊特希澤一貫的觀點是，爲保護國內的就業機會，外國一直對其出口商給予補貼，並同時在暗中系統地阻止進口。他的對策是找尋一系列貿易措施，限制美國的進口，即使世界貿易組織的規定只是勉強許可那樣做，況且這種做法有可能得不到許可。

“To attack a problem as large as our trade deficit with China, U.S. officials must be prepared, at a minimum, to consider very aggressive positions at the W.T.O.,” he said.

他說，“爲了解決像我們與中國的貿易赤字這樣大的問題，美國官員必須有所準備，至少要考慮在世界貿易組織做出非常聲勢浩大的表示。”

The choice of Mr. Lighthizer — and the trade tensions it underscores — leaves China in a difficult spot. He is part of a group of Trump trade appointees with close links to exactly the kinds of metal-bashing old-economy industries in which China faces the greatest overcapacity, and the toughest choices about how to close factories and lay off workers. Restrictions on exports to the United States will make those choices even harder for China.

提名萊特希澤爲貿易代表，以及這一選擇突顯的緊張貿易關係，讓中國處於一種艱難的境地。特朗普提名的貿易專員包括萊特希澤和其他人，他們都與以傳統金屬製造爲主的舊經濟產業有密切關係，而中國恰好在這些產業面臨最大的產能過剩問題，以及如何關閉工廠和讓工人下崗的最棘手選擇。限制這些工業向美國的出口將使中國的選擇更加困難。

Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who is Mr. Trump’s choice to become commerce secretary, made large chunks of his fortune in steel and auto parts, two huge industries that in China are ramping up exports. Peter Navarro, the head of the new White House office overseeing trade and industrial policy, is a vociferous critic of globalization who has contended that American purchases of imported goods at Walmart are helping China pay for nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States.

特朗普的商業部長人選是億萬富翁投資家威爾伯·羅斯(Wilbur Ross)，他的財富有一大部分是從鋼鐵和汽車零件產業賺來的，中國的這兩個行業十分龐大，同時也在大幅增加這類產品的出口。新白宮的貿易和工業政策辦公室負責人彼得·納瓦羅(Peter Navarro)是一位猛烈批評全球化的人，他聲稱，美國人在沃爾瑪購買進口商品，是在幫助中國爲製造針對美國的帶有核彈頭的導彈埋單。

The timing is bad for China.

這對中國來說時機不好。

The Chinese economy is slowing despite vast amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus. Big manufacturers in most industries are struggling with overcapacity, pushing them to sell goods overseas at cut-rate, even money-losing prices, just to cover their operating costs. Mr. Lighthizer has argued for years that the United States should keep out goods made with government subsidies or sold below the full cost of making them.

儘管有大量的財政和貨幣刺激措施，中國的經濟仍在放緩。大多數行業的大型製造商都在努力解決產能過剩的問題，迫使他們以極低、甚至虧損的價格向海外銷售商品，只要能保住他們的運營成本。萊特希澤多年來一直主張，美國應該不讓用政府補貼製造出來的商品入境，或不讓以低於全部成本的價格銷售的商品入境。

“Trump naming him makes me worry the U.S. will carry out more rigid measures on trade and investment,” said Wei Jianguo, a former vice minister of commerce.

曾擔任過中國商務部副部長的魏建國說，“特朗普任命他，這讓我擔心美國將對貿易和投資採取更嚴格的措施。”

Exports are important for China. It consistently sells $4 worth of goods to the United States for each $1 of imports. That mismatch has produced a bilateral trade surplus for China equal to about 3 percent of the country’s entire economy, creating tens of millions of jobs.

出口對中國很重要。長期以來，中國每進口1美元的東西，就向美國出售價值4美元的東西。這種差異給中國帶來的鉅額雙邊貿易順差約佔中國整個經濟的3％，創造了數千萬個就業機會。

The benefits to China from that surplus have been increasing rapidly in the past few years. Many exporters have stopped importing components and switched to increasingly capable local suppliers for everything from high-quality steel to advanced computer chips. Multinationals have moved entire supply chains to China, and transferred the technology to run them.

在過去幾年中，這個貿易順差給中國帶來的好處一直在迅速增長。許多中國出口商已停止進口零部件，改爲從越來越有能力的當地供應商得到一系列產品，從高品質鋼材到高級計算機芯片，不一而足。跨國公司已將整個供應鏈轉移到中國，並將技術轉讓給中國來運行這些供應鏈。

Many Democrats and many economists have also become increasingly disenchanted with the effect on American workers and the American economy. The Obama administration filed a long series of trade cases at the W.T.O. against China, although they involved fairly narrow policies and limited categories of goods. It has been preparing more, filing the latest trade case on Thursday over Chinese subsidies to aluminum producers.

對於這個問題給美國工人和美國經濟帶來的影響，許多民主黨人和經濟學家也越來越不滿。奧巴馬政府向世界貿易組織提交了長長的一大串針對中國的貿易案件，雖然這些案件所涉及的政策不多，所涉及的商品類別也很有限。奧巴馬政府一直在準備更多的案子，政府本週四提交的最新貿易案針對的是中國對鋁生產商的補貼。

If Mr. Trump goes even further in that direction, Mr. Lighthizer will bring a long background in such actions.

如果特朗普在這個方向更進一步的話，萊特希澤在採取這類行動方面有很深厚的背景。

When he was in the Reagan administration, Mr. Lighthizer was the deputy United States trade representative overseeing industrial policy in old-economy industries like cars and steel. Since then, Mr. Lighthizer has mainly been filing anti-subsidy and anti-dumping trade cases against imports on behalf of the American steel industry.

萊特希澤在里根政府任職時，是美國的副貿易代表，負責汽車和鋼鐵等舊經濟產業的產業政策。那以後，萊特希澤主要代表美國鋼鐵業起訴反補貼和反傾銷貿易案件。

“He’s the best negotiator I’ve ever worked with on policies involving trade or tax policy,” said Timothy Regan, Mr. Lighthizer’s chief of staff in the Reagan administration and now the senior vice president of global government affairs at Corning.

“在有關貿易政策或稅收政策上，他是我曾與之共事的人中最好的談判者，”萊特希澤在里根政府的辦公室主任蒂莫西·雷根(Timothy Regan)說，雷根現在是康寧(Corning)全球政府事務高級副總裁。

Mr. Lighthizer led successful efforts in the 1980s to force Japan to accept curbs on exports of cars and steel to the United States. Both were bold moves, particularly given that President Reagan at times espoused free trade. But when the W.T.O. was created the next decade, member nations agreed, with a few exceptions, to renounce imposing such export limits on other countries.

在20世紀80年代，萊特希澤成功領導的行動迫使日本接受了對美國出口汽車和鋼鐵的限制。這兩個都是大膽的舉動，尤其是考慮到里根總統有過大力支持自由貿易的時候。但是十年後，當世界貿易組織成立時，除少數幾個成員國外，其他成員國都同意放棄對其他國家採取這種出口限制。

The auto industry could be ripe for action again. China is an enormous exporter of auto parts to the United States. Under President Obama, trade tensions over automotive trade have already risen, and the Obama administration has won two W.T.O. cases. The cases forced China to abandon certain anti-dumping and anti-subsidy taxes on American autos and to dismantle a few, fairly narrow subsidies.

在汽車行業採取這種行動的時機可能已經成熟。中國目前向美國出口了數量巨大的汽車零部件。在奧巴馬總統領導下，在汽車貿易問題上的貿易緊張關係已經上升，奧巴馬政府贏得了兩個提交到世界貿易組織的案件。這些案件迫使中國放棄了對美國汽車徵收某些反傾銷和反補貼稅，並取消了一些涉及面相當狹窄的補貼。

“He was squarely in the trade talks with Japan,” said He Weiwen, a former commerce ministry official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, an influential Beijing research group, “so maybe Donald Trump wants him to do something similar on China.”

“他在與日本進行的貿易談判中直截了當，”前商務部官員何偉文說，何偉文現在是北京有影響力的研究機構中國與全球化智庫的高級研究員，“所以，也許唐納德·特朗普想讓他對中國做類似的事情。”

The intersection of tax and trade is a specialty of Mr. Lighthizer, who was an architect of a Reagan administration initiative to cut corporate taxes for exporters. He was previously chief of staff at the Senate Finance Committee, overseeing tax policy.

稅收與貿易的交叉是萊特希澤的專長，他是里根政府爲出口商降低公司所得稅方案的設計者。那之前，他曾在參議院財政委員會擔任辦公室主任，負責稅收政策。

In the Reagan administration, he pushed the limits of what is permissible under international trade rules. His plan allowed many American exporters to reduce their taxes by setting up overseas companies to manage their foreign sales. But the W.T.O. eventually torpedoed the effort after a challenge by the European Union in the late 1990s.

在里根政府時期，他曾挑戰國際貿易規則許可的邊界。他的計劃能讓許多美國出口商減少稅額，方式是創建海外公司，管理他們在海外的銷售。但歐盟在上世紀90年代提出質疑後，世界貿易組織最終讓這種努力失敗。

Republicans now appear to be taking a similar — albeit more ambitious — tack. They are exploring how to raise corporate taxes for importers and use the extra revenue to reduce taxes for all other companies.

現在，共和黨人似乎在採取同樣的策略——儘管更具野心。他們在探索如何提高針對進口商的企業稅，利用這種額外稅收減少其他企業的稅收。

China, as the biggest exporter to the United States, would face a major blow. But it would also affect American retailers, electronics companies and other multinationals that depend on supplies from anywhere overseas.

作爲美國最大的出口國，中國將面臨重大的打擊。但這項計劃也會影響美國的零售商、電子產品企業，以及其他依賴海外供應的跨國公司。

A big obstacle for Republicans is whether the W.T.O. would declare such a tax to be a trade barrier. China and Europe effectively penalize imports by imposing a type of national sales tax, an approach the W.T.O. has approved. It is a steep 17 percent in China.

共和黨人面臨的一大障礙是，世界貿易組織是否會宣佈徵收這樣的稅收是設置貿易壁壘的行爲。通過徵收一種全國性的營業稅，中國和歐洲實際上對進口進行了限制，這一措施得到了世貿組織的批准。在中國，這項稅收比例高達17%。

But House Republicans, leery of imposing any new national taxes, want to change existing corporate tax laws instead. W.T.O. rules discourage, although they do not necessarily prohibit, modifying corporate taxes in ways that penalize imports.

然而，衆議院共和黨人對施加任何新的全國性稅收都存有疑慮，作爲替代，他們想改變現存的企業稅制度。世貿組織的規則不鼓勵以限制進口的方式改變企業所得稅，儘管他們不一定禁止這麼做。

The W.T.O. review process, though, is lengthy. So Mr. Lighthizer and Congress could well go ahead with the tax plan, lightening the tax burden for American manufacturers as well as inflicting plenty of damage on China and the global supply chain.

只是，世貿組織的評審過程十分漫長。所以萊特希澤和國會完全可以繼續這項稅收計劃，減輕美國製造業的稅收負擔，同時給中國和全球供應鏈帶來巨大的損害。

And the W.T.O.’s response — if it found the plan invalid — would not have much heft. Mostly, the global trade group could authorize Beijing to impose trade restrictions on the United States’ much smaller exports to China.

世貿組織的反應——即便它裁決這項計劃無效——也不會產生太大影響。這個全球性的貿易組織多半會授權北京對美國規模小得多的對華出口業務進行貿易限制。

That prospect does not scare Mr. Lighthizer very much, as he made clear in his 2010 testimony.

這一前景不太會讓萊特希澤感到害怕，他在2010年的證詞中就表明了這一點。

“W.T.O. commitments are not religious obligations,” Mr. Lighthizer said, and violations “are not subject to coercion by some W.T.O. police force.”

“世貿組織的約定不是宗教義務，”萊特希澤說，就算違反它，“世貿組織的警察也不能採取強制措施”。