對華貿易讓美國人賠了多少 On Trade Angry Voters Have a Point

Were the experts wrong about the benefits of trade for the American economy?

專家們把貿易對美國經濟的好處弄錯了？

The nation’s working class will have another opportunity to demonstrate its political clout Tuesday night, as primary voters go to the polls in Illinois and Ohio, Rust Belt states that have suffered intensely from the loss of good manufacturing jobs. Last week, the insurrection handed Michigan’s Democratic primary to Bernie Sanders while continuing to buoy the insurgent Republican candidacy of Donald Trump.

隨着伊利諾伊州和俄亥俄州的初選選民前往投票站，這兩個丟失了大量就業機會的傳統工業州的美國工人階級週二晚將再次有機會展示他們的政治影響力。上週，密歇根州的造反選民把民主黨初選的勝利送給了伯尼·桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)，同時繼續保持了非正統的唐納德·特朗普(Donald Trump)在共和黨總統候選人中的領先地位。

Voters’ anger and frustration, driven in part by relentless globalization and technological change, may not propel either candidate to the presidency. But it is already having a big impact on America’s future, shaking a once-solid consensus that freer trade is, necessarily, a good thing.

雖然部分由於全球化和技術變革所導致的選民憤怒和沮喪，可能不會讓這兩名候選人中的任何一位成爲總統。但這種情緒已經對美國的未來產生了很大的影響，它動搖了一個曾經堅定的共識，既自由貿易必定是一件好事。

“The economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded trade is a double-edged sword,” wrote Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“總統競選活動中的經濟民粹主義迫使人們認識到，不斷擴大的貿易是一把雙刃劍，”副總統小約瑟夫·R·拜登(Joseph R. Biden Jr.)的前經濟顧問賈裏德·伯恩斯坦(Jared Bernstein)寫道。

What seems most striking is that the angry working class — dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade — appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.

看來最引人注目的是，常常被人認爲是短視的、無法全面瞭解貿易所代表的經濟權衡的憤怒的工人階級，似乎早明白了專家們遲來的真理髮現：貿易給美國經濟帶來的好處也許並不總能證明其代價的正當性。

In a recent study, three economists — David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn at the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson at the University of California, San Diego — raised a profound challenge to all of us brought up to believe that economies quickly recover from trade shocks. In theory, a developed industrial country like the United States adjusts to import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that can successfully compete in global markets.

在最近的一項研究中，三位經濟學家，麻省理工學院的戴維·奧托爾 (David Autor)、蘇黎世大學的戴維·多恩 (David Dorn)，以及加州大學聖迭哥分校的戈登·漢森(Gordon Hanson)，對我們的教育讓我們所有人都相信是正確的理論提出了深刻的挑戰，該理論認爲一個經濟體會從貿易衝擊中迅速恢復過來。從理論上講，像美國這樣的工業發達國家，應該通過把勞動力轉移到能在全球市場上競爭的更先進的產業來應對出口競爭。

They examined the experience of American workers after China erupted onto world markets some two decades ago. The presumed adjustment, they concluded, never happened. Or at least hasn’t happened yet. Wages remain low and unemployment high in the most affected local job markets. Nationally, there is no sign of offsetting job gains elsewhere in the economy. What’s more, they found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.

他們研究了大約二十年前中國突然出現在世界市場上之後的美國工人的經歷。他們的結論是，理論上該出現的調整從未發生。或者至少還沒有發生。在受影響最大的本地就業市場，工資持續上不去，失業率高居不下。從全國來看，也沒有跡象表明其他經濟領域能提供就業增長來抵消製造業的失業。更重要的是，他們發現，暴露在中國競爭下的當地勞動力市場上的工資下降，每年讓每個成年人減少了213美元的收入。

In another study they wrote with Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from M.I.T., they estimated that rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs.

在另一份他們與麻省理工學院的達隆·阿齊默魯(Daron Acemoglu)和布蘭登·普萊斯(Brendan Price)合寫的研究報告中，他們估計，1999年至2011年累計從中國進口商品的成本是高達240萬美國人的就業機會。

“These results should cause us to rethink the short- and medium-run gains from trade,” they argued. “Having failed to anticipate how significant the dislocations from trade might be, it is incumbent on the literature to more convincingly estimate the gains from trade, such that the case for free trade is not based on the sway of theory alone, but on a foundation of evidence that illuminates who gains, who loses, by how much, and under what conditions.”

“這些結果應該引起我們重新思考貿易帶來的短期和中期效益，”他們提出。“由於未能預見貿易造成的錯位可能如此嚴重，文獻有責任爲貿易所帶來的好處給出更有說服力的估計，讓贊成自由貿易的人不只靠理論的根據，也有證據基礎表明誰受益、誰吃虧，各是多少，在什麼條件下。”

Global trade offers undeniable benefits. It helped pull hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty in a matter of a few decades, an unparalleled feat. It ensured Apple could benefit from China’s ample supply of cheap labor. Consumers around the world gained better-priced, better-made goods.

全球貿易帶來了不可否認的好處。它幫助讓數億中國人在短短几十年裏擺脫了貧困，這是一個無與倫比的壯舉。它保證了蘋果公司可以受益於中國充分的廉價勞動力供給。讓世界各地的消費者得到價格更優惠、更好的製造產品。

Still, though trade may be good for the country over all — after netting out winners and losers — the case for globalization based on the fact that it helps expand the economic pie by 3 percent becomes much weaker when it also changes the distribution of the slices by 50 percent, Mr. Autor argued. And that is especially true when the American political system has shown no interest in compensating those on the losing side.

雖然如此，但奧托爾提供證據表示，儘管在考慮了誰贏誰輸之後, 貿易對一個國家在整體上有好處，但當考慮到它把蛋糕的分配改變了50%之後，支持貿易幫助全球經濟蛋糕增長了3％的證據就比較弱了。而且當美國的政治體制對補償在這種貿易中失利的一方表現得沒有興趣時，情況尤其是這樣。

The impact of China’s great leap into the market economy — which drew hundreds of millions of impoverished peasants into the manufacturing sector, mostly making goods for export to the United States and other wealthy nations — is waning. China’s wages are rising fast. Its exports and economy are slowing.

中國大步跨入市場經濟的影響正在減弱，中國的市場經濟曾經吸引了上億的貧困農民進入製造業，他們主要爲美國和其他富裕國家制造出口產品。中國的工資水平正在快速升高。中國的出口和經濟正在放緩。

Trade with other parts of the world has not been as disruptive. For all the criticism of Nafta, most economists assess its impact on American workers as modest. Trade flows with Mexico were smaller and more balanced than those with China. American manufacturing employment remained fairly stable in the years after Nafta came into force in 1994, plummeting only after China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 and gained consistent access to markets in the United States.

中國與世界其他地方的貿易沒有如此之大的破壞性。儘管有對北美自由貿易協定的種種批評，但大多數經濟學家評估其對美國工人的影響並不太大。美國與墨西哥的貿易往來，相對其與中國的貿易往來要小得多，也更平衡。美國製造業就業人數，在北美自由貿易協定於1994年生效後的多年裏一直保持相對穩定，只是在中國2001年加入世界貿易組織、獲得穩定進入美國市場的許可後，才大幅度減少。

The Chinese export onslaught, however, left a scar on the American working class that has not healed. That disproportionate impact suggests Washington officialdom might do well to reassess its approach to future trade liberalization. Most important, it points to reconsidering how policy makers deal with trade’s distributional consequences.

但是，中國出口帶來的衝擊給美國工人階級造成的創傷尚未痊癒。這種不成比例的影響提醒華盛頓的官員們，也許應該改變其在未來貿易自由化方面的做法。最重要的是，它指明需重新考慮政策制定者應該如何處理貿易分配後果的問題。