美國貿易問題的源頭在哪裏

Here’s a statistic that tells you much of what you need to know about the US trade debate — only 1 per cent of US companies export. It’s a figure that I uncovered recently in a McKinsey Global Institute report on the state of US manufacturing, which confirmed much of what my own reporting has informed me about US trade problems.

有個統計數字可以在很大程度上揭示美國貿易辯論的概況：只有1%的美國公司對外出口產品。我最近在麥肯錫全球研究所(McKinsey Global Institute)一份有關美國製造業狀況的報告中看到了這個數字，它在很大程度上印證了我在撰寫美國貿易問題相關報道時得到的感想。

They begin at home, not abroad. That is not a line you will hear over the next few days, as negotiators meet in Mexico for the latest round of North American Free Trade Agreement talks.

美國貿易問題發端於國內，而不是國外。近日有關談判代表們在墨西哥出席最新一輪北美自貿協定(Nafta)談判時，你絕不會聽到諸如此類的話語。

The Trump administration is likely to point fingers and threaten again to pull out of the whole agreement. But if the White House wants to fix trade, it would do better to look at three crucial mistakes that have been made at home — and then compare them with opposite strategies in China, the world’s biggest manufacturing country.

特朗普(Trump)政府可能對別人橫加指責，再次威脅要徹底退出北美自貿協定。但是，如果白宮想解決貿易問題，最好看看本國所犯的三個重大錯誤，再拿來和世界最大製造業國家中國所採取的相反戰略對比一下。

The first mistake was to starve manufacturing of investment. Private sector investment in the sector in the US is at 30-year lows; the ages of the average factory and piece of machinery are 25 and nine years, respectively. The McKinsey Global Institute report estimates that about $115bn of investment would be required annually over the next decade to fix this problem.

第一個錯誤是讓製造業得不到投資。美國製造業的私營部門投資正處於30年低點；工廠和機械平均已投入使用25年和9年。麥肯錫全球研究所的報告估計，要解決這個問題，未來十年每年將需要投資約1150億美元。

But trade and tax policy in the US does almost nothing to provide an incentive for that investment. Companies talk a good game about repatriation, but privately admit that the bulk of any money brought home will go into share buybacks and dividend payments. Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, last week appeared surprised (or perhaps feigned surprise) as three hands went up when, at a conference, chief executives were asked how many would invest at home if tax reform were passed. Why should they, when there are no quid pro quos of repatriation in exchange for equipment investment, training or the funding of an infrastructure bank?

然而，美國的貿易和稅收政策幾乎完全不能爲此類投資提供激勵。企業嘴上大談將海外資金匯回國內，私底下卻承認，大部分匯回資金將用於回購股票和派發股息。在近日一次會議上，當首席執行官們被問到假如稅改通過有多少人會在國內投資，只有三個人舉手，當時唐納德?特朗普總統(Donald Trump)的經濟顧問加里?科恩(Gary Cohn)顯得很驚訝（也許只是假裝驚訝）。當匯回資金用於設備投資、培訓人員和向基礎設施銀行注資卻不能獲得補償時，誰會投資呢？

As the past two decades have shown, supply side economics alone does not result in a productive use of capital, particularly when it comes to global multinationals; sometimes, you have to push investment to the areas where it is needed. That’s exactly what China is doing with its $1tn infrastructure investment plan.

過去20年的情形已經證明，單純靠供給側經濟學手段並不能促成資本的有效使用，尤其是涉及到全球性跨國企業的時候；有時候，你必須推動投資流入需要資金的領域。這正是中國的1萬億美元基礎設施投資計劃所做的事情。

Second, the US trade debate has focused far too much on the largest domestic companies, which are doing quite well, in terms of share price, profit margins and sales growth. Yet the vast majority of the 250,000 manufacturing groups in the US employ fewer than 100 people.

第二，美國貿易辯論過多地關注國內大公司，這些公司在股價、利潤率和銷售增長方面都很出色。然而全美25萬家製造業公司中，絕大多數公司的僱員在100人以下。

The current zero-sum game global trade debate hardly applies to them at all. Most do not export, not because they cannot but because access to capital has been tighter for them relative to their rich country peers since the Great Recession (that lack of investment creates a 40 per cent productivity gap between small and large businesses). Reconnecting the dots between the largest exporters and the supply chain could fix that.

當前零和遊戲式的全球貿易辯論對它們根本不適用。它們大多數並不出口產品，並非因爲它們做不到，而是因爲，自大衰退(Great Recession)以來，相對於財力雄厚的國內同行，它們獲得資金的渠道收緊得更厲害（投資不足造成了小公司和大公司之間的生產率差距達到40%）。把大型出口商和供應鏈之間的點重新連接起來，可能會解決這一問題。

Regionalisation is the new globalisation — the largest firms in the US should be given explicit government incentives to work with local suppliers, which would do much to address the president’s trade deficit obsession, since 70-80 per cent of the value of a finished product is in the supply chain.

地區化是新的全球化——美國政府應爲國內大公司提供明確激勵措施，推動它們與當地供應商合作，這對於解決總統一直糾結的貿易逆差問題大有裨益，因爲一件製成品的價值有70%至80%來自供應鏈。

Again, this is something that China has prioritised in its 2025 development plan, which states explicitly that the country wants to minimise dependence on foreign markets and technologies.

這同樣是中國2025發展規劃中列爲重點的內容。該規劃明確指出，中國要把對外國市場和技術的依賴降到最低程度。

Finally, the US desperately needs to connect Silicon Valley and the rust belt. High-tech manufacturing — 3D printing, the internet of things, sensors in products that create business opportunities in data analytics and services, rather than just goods — may well be the future. Yet, shockingly, roughly half of US manufacturing companies have no digital strategy whatsoever, according to an MGI survey.

最後，美國迫切需要把硅谷和“鏽帶”連接起來。高科技製造業——3D打印、物聯網、應用於可在數據分析領域創造商業機遇的產品中的傳感器，以及服務，而不僅僅是商品——很可能是未來發展方向。但令人震驚的是，麥肯錫全球研究所的一份調查報告顯示，大約一半的美國製造業公司沒有制定任何數字戰略。

Meanwhile, the technocrats in the Chinese Communist party are giving speeches about the integration of the physical and digital worlds that would leave many people in US boardrooms scratching their heads.

與此同時，中國共產黨的技術官員們紛紛發表關於實體和數字世界相融合的演講，這種講話內容會讓美國企業董事會的許多人摸不着頭腦。

Of course, it’s easier to do economic-dot connecting in an autocracy. No one is arguing for that, but it does speak to the core problem — the Trump administration is trying to push “America First” without any clear and coherent plan of what that means, or how to make an industrial strategy happen.

當然，要將經濟中的點連接起來，在一個專制體制中會更容易做到。沒人提倡這種體制，但它確實揭示一個核心問題——特朗普政府正在努力推動“美國優先”政策，卻沒有制定明確而連貫的計劃來闡明這一政策的含義或者解釋如何成功實施一項產業政策。

“You look at the current trade debate and you just think, ‘What a lost opportunity’,” says MGI director James Manyika.

“看着當前的貿易辯論，你只會想，‘我們錯失了一個怎樣的機會啊’，”麥肯錫全球研究所所長詹姆斯?馬尼卡(James Manyika)說。

The countries that the US left behind when the administration pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — high-growth emerging market nations with expanding middle classes that are engaged in major infrastructure building works — are exactly those with the largest demand for the US’s most valuable exports, such as high-tech products, pharmaceuticals and heavy machinery.

美國政府退出《跨太平洋夥伴關係協定》(TPP)時拋在身後的那些國家——高速增長的擁有不斷壯大的中產階層的新興市場國家，它們正在參與一些重大的基礎設施建設工程——恰恰是對美國最有價值的出口產品（比如高科技產品、藥品和重型機械）需求最大的國家。

Pulling out of Nafta, particularly without any kind of homegrown industrial policy, would be an equally big mistake. Economic nationalism with no economic plan will not make America great again. In fact, it may be worse than the laissez-faire alternative.

退出北美自貿協定——尤其是在缺乏任何一種形式的本土產業政策的情況下——將是同等嚴重的錯誤。沒有經濟計劃的經濟民族主義將不會讓美國再次變得偉大。事實上，這也許比自由放任的政策還要糟糕得多。