美國大選中的貿易牌 Trump trade and the China shock

It hasn’t escaped the notice of pundits that the political iconoclasts Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have something in common: they’re sceptical about trade. Trump, for example, has riffed expansively: “We don’t win any more. We don’t beat China in trade. We don’t beat Japan … We can’t beat Mexico, at the border or in trade.” Sanders expressed his concerns with a little more precision: “While bad trade agreements are not the only reason why manufacturing jobs in the US have declined, they are an important factor.”

專家們注意到，伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)和唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)這兩位政治上的離經叛道者有一個共同之處，即都對貿易抱着懷疑態度。例如，特朗普多次宣稱：“我們不再贏得勝利，我們沒有在貿易上打敗中國。我們沒有打敗日本……我們不可能在邊境或貿易上打敗墨西哥。”桑德斯更爲有的放矢地表達了他的擔憂：“儘管糟糕的貿易協定不是美國製造業就業崗位下降的唯一原因，但它們是一個重要因素。”

Both men have vastly outperformed expectations in the primary campaigns. There are many reasons for that but perhaps the simplest explanation is that freer trade has inflicted a more grievous toll than economists, myself included, had expected.

兩人在美國總統初選中的表現都比外界預期的好得多。這有許多原因，但最簡單的解釋或許是，自由貿易深化所引發的負面影響超過了經濟學家（包括我自己）的預期。

Fifteen years ago, the conventional economic wisdom was that free trade was almost unambiguously a good idea. Here’s the basic logic. There are two ways for the British to get hold of wine. We can grow and press our own grapes, or we can make something that the French want and trade with them. If we’re good at making, say, computer games and the French are good at making wine, then trading is the better way to get what we want.

15年前，傳統的經濟觀點是，自由貿易幾乎毋庸置疑是個好主意。基本邏輯如下。英國有兩種方式可以得到葡萄酒。我們可以自己種植葡萄來釀酒，或者我們製造法國人想要的東西，並和他們進行貿易。如果我們擅長製造，比如開發計算機遊戲，而法國人擅長釀酒，那麼貿易就是我們各取所需的更好方式。

The idea that we might, Trumpishly, “beat the French in trade” sounds appealing but is incoherent. And while a British Sanders might point to the loss of jobs in the UK wine industry, that would miss the gains in the software industry. There is little economic difference between a tariff on the import of French wine and a tariff on the export of British software.

我們可能——用特朗普式的措辭——“在貿易上打敗法國人”的觀點聽起來很有吸引力，但它是不合邏輯的。儘管英國版桑德斯可能指出英國葡萄酒產業的就業崗位下降，但這種說法沒有考慮軟件產業的就業增加。法國葡萄酒進口關稅和英國軟件出口關稅在經濟學上幾乎沒有差別。

Here’s a parable beloved of economists. An entrepreneur announces a technological breakthrough: he has a machine that can disintegrate computer game discs and reconstitute the atoms into fine wine. He sets up a factory on the coast of Kent with the machine inside. Computer games go in, and cases of wine emerge. But then an investigative reporter from the Financial Times gains access to the factory and finds that there is no machine — just a dock where a forklift truck operator busily unloads French wine from a boat, replacing it with computer games for export to the French market. Should we care? From the point of view of the British, isn’t France merely a technology for converting computer games into wine?

經濟學家們喜歡這則寓言。一名企業家宣佈取得技術突破：他有一臺機器可以將計算機遊戲光盤分解爲原子，然後將這些原子重新組合爲葡萄酒。他在肯特海岸建了一家裝配有上述機器的工廠。計算機遊戲光盤進入工廠，然後成箱的葡萄酒就生產出來了。但隨後一位來自英國《金融時報》的調查記者進入工廠，卻發現根本沒有什麼機器，只是一個碼頭，叉車司機正忙着將法國葡萄酒從船上卸下，然後把計算機遊戲光盤裝上船出口到法國。我們應該在乎嗎？從英國人的角度來看，法國不就相當於一種將計算機遊戲光盤轉化爲葡萄酒的技術嗎？

With formal models to back up this sort of story, most economists took the view that when countries lower their trade barriers, even unilaterally, they prosper. What the British wine industry loses, the UK computer games industry gains. Meanwhile, consumers get better and cheaper wine into the bargain.

隨着這種故事受到正式模型的支持，大多數經濟學家認爲，當各國降低貿易壁壘的時候，即便是單方面的，這些國家也會蓬勃發展。英國葡萄酒產業失去什麼，英國計算機遊戲產業就獲得什麼。與此同時，消費者還獲得了品質更好、價格更爲便宜的葡萄酒。

It was always clear that, despite the win-win nature of trade at the national level, freer trade could create losers — such as British vineyards and French computer game studios. But the conventional wisdom was that these losses were both small and fixable with the right policies of retraining or redistribution. Most importantly, people who lost their jobs could find new ones in booming export industries.

始終明確的一點是，儘管貿易的本質在國家層面上是雙贏的，但自由貿易程度加深可能產生輸家——比如英國的葡萄酒莊園和法國的計算機遊戲工作室。但傳統觀點認爲，這些損失很小，而且還可以通過再培訓或再分配的正確政策補救。最重要的是，失業者可以在蓬勃發展的出口行業找到新工作。

Admittedly, it was evident even 20 years ago that median household incomes were stagnating in the US, inequality was rising in anglophone countries, and manufacturing employment was steadily falling. But these trends seemed to owe more to technological change than to globalisation.

誠然，美國家庭收入中值增長停滯，以英語爲母語的國家的不平等現象加劇，以及製造業就業人數持續下降，這些現象在20年前就很明顯。但這些趨勢似乎更多地源於技術變革而非全球化。

I’ve been phrasing all this “conventional wisdom” in the past tense but, for the most part, it stands up. However, it is acquiring an important and depressing footnote. A new research paper, “The China Shock”, from David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, is part of a rethink under way in the economics profession.

我一直用過去時來指稱這種“傳統觀點”，但如今這種觀點基本上仍然盛行。然而，現在這種觀點得到了一個重要而令人沮喪的註腳。戴維•奧托爾(David Autor)、戴維•多恩(David Dorn)和戈登•漢森(Gordon Hanson)合作撰寫的新研究報告《中國衝擊》(The China Shock)就是經濟學界反思的一個成果。

Autor and his colleagues try to zoom in on the impact of China’s emergence as a trading power. China’s rise has been dramatic, driven almost entirely by internal policy changes inside China, and has had a differential effect on different regions and industries. For example, Tennessee and Alabama are both US manufacturing centres exposed to global competition. But Tennessee’s furniture manufacturing industry is much more exposed to China in particular than is Alabama’s heavier manufacturing industries. This helps the researchers to figure out with more confidence what the impact of the China shock has been.

奧托爾及其同事試圖聚焦中國成爲貿易大國的影響。中國的崛起引人矚目，幾乎完全受到國內政策改變的推動，對不同地區和行業產生了不同的影響。例如，田納西州和亞拉巴馬州都是美國的製造業中心，遭受全球範圍的競爭。但與亞拉巴馬州的重工業製造業相比，田納西州的傢俱製造業遭受中國競爭的影響大得多。這有助於研究員更加肯定地得出“中國衝擊”是什麼樣的影響。

Autor, Dorn and Hanson conclude that the American workers who have been hurt by competition with China have been hurt more deeply, and for a longer period, than many economists predicted. Employment has fallen in industries exposed to trade competition, as expected. But it has not shown much signs of rising in export-oriented sectors.

奧托爾、多恩和漢森得出結論稱，受到中國競爭影響的美國工人受到的傷害、以及受影響的時間超過許多經濟學家的預期。遭遇貿易競爭的行業的就業人數如預期那樣下降，但沒有多少跡象表明出口導向型行業的就業人數上升。

The US labour market is less flexible than we thought, it seems. In a simplified economic model, workers move smoothly to a new home, a new industry, even a new level of education. In practice, Autor and his colleagues find that communities hit by Chinese competition often do not adapt; they wither. It may take a generation or two, rather than a few years, to adjust.

美國勞動力市場的靈活性似乎低於我們的預期。在一個簡化的經濟模型中，工人會順利地搬到一個新家、進入一個新的行業，甚至獲得新的教育水平。但事實上，奧托爾及其同事發現，遭受中國競爭衝擊的羣體往往適應不了；他們會萎靡。適應的過程可能需要一兩代人的時間，而非幾年時間。

In the long run, of course, that adjustment will happen — just as we have adjusted to the decline of agricultural labour or the need for typewriter repairs. But the long run is longer than many economists feared. It is easy to see why supporters of Trump and Sanders have run out of patience.

當然，長期而言，這種適應總會發生，就像我們已經適應了農業勞動力減少或者打字機維修需求下降一樣。但這個長期比許多經濟學家擔心的還要長。不難理解，特朗普和桑德斯的支持者爲何已經耐心告盡。