特朗普的贸易代表与中国面临的困境

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——他曾作为最高贸易官员对日本汽车和钢铁进入美国加以限制。他曾中断过与中国的谈判，而该谈判将会达成一项促进两国间投资的协议。他曾试图通过特殊税收减免，让美国出口商获得优势。

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.

在涉及到困扰工薪阶级美国人和制造商的问题时，候任总统唐纳德·J·特朗普的美国贸易代表提名人罗伯特·莱特希泽(Robert Lighthizer)一贯的做法是指责美国的贸易伙伴，对那些在他看来是大范围滥用自由贸易规则的行为，他主张给予其强有力的报复。

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.

这种处世态度，是他在20世纪80年代担任美国副贸易代表时形成的，在后来作为美国钢铁行业主要贸易律师几十年的职业生涯中，得到了进一步完善。现在，他看来已经准备好要把精力集中到对付中国上来。

“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.

“这看来很明显，美国的制造业危机同我们与中国的贸易有关，”2010年，莱特希泽在一个国会委员会的听证会上说。

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.

多年来，莱特希泽一贯的观点是，为保护国内的就业机会，外国一直对其出口商给予补贴，并同时在暗中系统地阻止进口。他的对策是找寻一系列贸易措施，限制美国的进口，即使世界贸易组织的规定只是勉强许可那样做，况且这种做法有可能得不到许可。

“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.

他说，“为了解决像我们与中国的贸易赤字这样大的问题，美国官员必须有所准备，至少要考虑在世界贸易组织做出非常声势浩大的表示。”

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.

提名莱特希泽为贸易代表，以及这一选择突显的紧张贸易关系，让中国处于一种艰难的境地。特朗普提名的贸易专员包括莱特希泽和其他人，他们都与以传统金属制造为主的旧经济产业有密切关系，而中国恰好在这些产业面临最大的产能过剩问题，以及如何关闭工厂和让工人下岗的最棘手选择。限制这些工业向美国的出口将使中国的选择更加困难。

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.

特朗普的商业部长人选是亿万富翁投资家威尔伯·罗斯(Wilbur Ross)，他的财富有一大部分是从钢铁和汽车零件产业赚来的，中国的这两个行业十分庞大，同时也在大幅增加这类产品的出口。新白宫的贸易和工业政策办公室负责人彼得·纳瓦罗(Peter Navarro)是一位猛烈批评全球化的人，他声称，美国人在沃尔玛购买进口商品，是在帮助中国为制造针对美国的带有核弹头的导弹埋单。

The timing is bad for China.

这对中国来说时机不好。

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.

尽管有大量的财政和货币刺激措施，中国的经济仍在放缓。大多数行业的大型制造商都在努力解决产能过剩的问题，迫使他们以极低、甚至亏损的价格向海外销售商品，只要能保住他们的运营成本。莱特希泽多年来一直主张，美国应该不让用政府补贴制造出来的商品入境，或不让以低于全部成本的价格销售的商品入境。

“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.

曾担任过中国商务部副部长的魏建国说，“特朗普任命他，这让我担心美国将对贸易和投资采取更严格的措施。”

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.

出口对中国很重要。长期以来，中国每进口1美元的东西，就向美国出售价值4美元的东西。这种差异给中国带来的巨额双边贸易顺差约占中国整个经济的3％，创造了数千万个就业机会。

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.

在过去几年中，这个贸易顺差给中国带来的好处一直在迅速增长。许多中国出口商已停止进口零部件，改为从越来越有能力的当地供应商得到一系列产品，从高品质钢材到高级计算机芯片，不一而足。跨国公司已将整个供应链转移到中国，并将技术转让给中国来运行这些供应链。

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.

对于这个问题给美国工人和美国经济带来的影响，许多民主党人和经济学家也越来越不满。奥巴马政府向世界贸易组织提交了长长的一大串针对中国的贸易案件，虽然这些案件所涉及的政策不多，所涉及的商品类别也很有限。奥巴马政府一直在准备更多的案子，政府本周四提交的最新贸易案针对的是中国对铝生产商的补贴。

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

如果特朗普在这个方向更进一步的话，莱特希泽在采取这类行动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.

莱特希泽在里根政府任职时，是美国的副贸易代表，负责汽车和钢铁等旧经济产业的产业政策。那以后，莱特希泽主要代表美国钢铁业起诉反补贴和反倾销贸易案件。

“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.

“在有关贸易政策或税收政策上，他是我曾与之共事的人中最好的谈判者，”莱特希泽在里根政府的办公室主任蒂莫西·雷根(Timothy Regan)说，雷根现在是康宁(Corning)全球政府事务高级副总裁。

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世纪80年代，莱特希泽成功领导的行动迫使日本接受了对美国出口汽车和钢铁的限制。这两个都是大胆的举动，尤其是考虑到里根总统有过大力支持自由贸易的时候。但是十年后，当世界贸易组织成立时，除少数几个成员国外，其他成员国都同意放弃对其他国家采取这种出口限制。

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.

在汽车行业采取这种行动的时机可能已经成熟。中国目前向美国出口了数量巨大的汽车零部件。在奥巴马总统领导下，在汽车贸易问题上的贸易紧张关系已经上升，奥巴马政府赢得了两个提交到世界贸易组织的案件。这些案件迫使中国放弃了对美国汽车征收某些反倾销和反补贴税，并取消了一些涉及面相当狭窄的补贴。

“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.”

“他在与日本进行的贸易谈判中直截了当，”前商务部官员何伟文说，何伟文现在是北京有影响力的研究机构中国与全球化智库的高级研究员，“所以，也许唐纳德·特朗普想让他对中国做类似的事情。”

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.

税收与贸易的交叉是莱特希泽的专长，他是里根政府为出口商降低公司所得税方案的设计者。那之前，他曾在参议院财政委员会担任办公室主任，负责税收政策。

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.

在里根政府时期，他曾挑战国际贸易规则许可的边界。他的计划能让许多美国出口商减少税额，方式是创建海外公司，管理他们在海外的销售。但欧盟在上世纪90年代提出质疑后，世界贸易组织最终让这种努力失败。

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.

现在，共和党人似乎在采取同样的策略——尽管更具野心。他们在探索如何提高针对进口商的企业税，利用这种额外税收减少其他企业的税收。

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.

作为美国最大的出口国，中国将面临重大的打击。但这项计划也会影响美国的零售商、电子产品企业，以及其他依赖海外供应的跨国公司。

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.

共和党人面临的一大障碍是，世界贸易组织是否会宣布征收这样的税收是设置贸易壁垒的行为。通过征收一种全国性的营业税，中国和欧洲实际上对进口进行了限制，这一措施得到了世贸组织的批准。在中国，这项税收比例高达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，众议院共和党人对施加任何新的全国性税收都存有疑虑，作为替代，他们想改变现存的企业税制度。世贸组织的规则不鼓励以限制进口的方式改变企业所得税，尽管他们不一定禁止这么做。

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，世贸组织的评审过程十分漫长。所以莱特希泽和国会完全可以继续这项税收计划，减轻美国制造业的税收负担，同时给中国和全球供应链带来巨大的损害。

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.

世贸组织的反应——即便它裁决这项计划无效——也不会产生太大影响。这个全球性的贸易组织多半会授权北京对美国规模小得多的对华出口业务进行贸易限制。

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

这一前景不太会让莱特希泽感到害怕，他在2010年的证词中就表明了这一点。

“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.”

“世贸组织的约定不是宗教义务，”莱特希泽说，就算违反它，“世贸组织的警察也不能采取强制措施”。