全球貿易停滯的隱憂 The warning signs of trade stagnation

With Greece out of the spotlight, global investors have returned to worrying about a future rise in US interest rates and the volatility that could bring to markets. They appear to be supremely unconcerned by the stagnation in world trade this year. But that could turn out to be a costly mistake.

隨着希臘淡出人們的視野焦點，全球投資者重新開始憂慮美國何時加息及其可能給市場帶來的波動。他們似乎對今年全球貿易陷入停滯無動於衷。但這可能釀成一個代價高昂的錯誤。

The latest World Trade Monitor showed the volume of world trade falling in May, by 1.2 per cent. It has slid in four out of five months in 2015 and risen just 1.5 per cent in the past 12 months — less than the growth in global output and far below the long-term average of about 7 per cent a year.

最新一期的《世界貿易監測》(World Trade Monitor)表明，今年5月全球貿易量下滑1.2%。2015年的頭5個月中有4個月都出現下滑。過去12個月裏全球貿易量僅增長1.5%——這不僅低於全球產出增長，也遠低於7%的長期平均年增長水平。

The problem has been getting worse for some time. Trade bounced back fairly well in 2010 after the global recession but it has disappointed ever since, growing by barely 3 per cent in 2012 and 2013. Now it seems the world cannot manage even that.

這個問題不斷惡化已經有一段時間了。全球經濟衰退後，貿易在2010年出現相當不錯的反彈，但此後就一直令人失望，在2012年和2013年都僅增長了3%，現在似乎連這樣的增長水平都達不到了。

The prevailing view is that we do not need to worry about this weakness because it is largely structural. According to this argument, exceptional forces that conspired to make growth more trade-intensive in the 1990s and 2000s are now coming to a natural end.

普遍看法是，我們無需憂慮這種疲弱的狀態，因為這主要是結構性問題。根據這種説法，在1990年代和2000年代促使經濟增長“貿易密集度”較高的多種特殊力量正迎來自然終結。

Those decades brought a historic decline in trade barriers and global transportation costs together with the dramatic entry of emerging market economies into the world trading system — notably China. All that, in turn, helped produce a much deeper division of international labour which sent different parts of a single production chain to far-flung parts of the world.

在那二十年，貿易壁壘和全球運輸成本出現歷史性下降，同時新興市場經濟體戲劇性地進入全球貿易體系——特別是中國。這一切進而在國際間推動了更深層次的勞動分工，使單一生產鏈的不同環節散佈於世界的不同角落。

A recent study by the International Monetary Fund calculated that in the 1990s, every 1 per cent rise in global income generated a 2.5 per cent rise in global trade, much more than in the past. But not any more. Obviously, global growth could not become more trade-intensive forever. In fact, the volume of trade in services is still going up. But in manufacturing, rising costs and greater self-sufficiency in emerging markets and changing production techniques around the world have led many of those intricate global value chains to be unpicked. Since 2013 every 1 per cent of global growth has pro攙甀挀攀攙 a trade bump of just 0.7 per cent.

國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)最近的一項研究計算出，在20世紀90年代，全球收入每增長1%，全球貿易就會增長2.5%，比以往多得多，但這樣的情況不再出現了。顯然，全球增長的貿易密集度不會永遠增長下去。實際上，服務貿易量依然在上升。但在製造業，新興市場成本上升和自給自足程度提高，以及世界各地生產方式的變化，已導致不少複雜的全球價值鏈不復存在。自2013年以來，每1%的全球增長只能產生0.7%的貿易增長。

China is the great case study. In the mid-1990s as much as 60 per cent of the value of the country’s goods exports came from imported parts and materials. That has now fallen to about 35 per cent. In the US, manufacturing imports have not risen at all as a share of gross domestic product since 2000. In the decade before that they nearly doubled.

中國是一個很好的案例。上世紀90年代中期，中國出口的產品多達60%的價值來自於進口零部件和原材料。如今這一比例已經降至約35%。在美國，自2000年以來，製造業進口占國內生產總值(GDP)的比重一直沒有上升。而在之前十年，這一比重幾乎翻了一倍。

For some, this is perfectly natural and nothing to be concerned about. But structural forces can explain why trade is growing more slowly — they cannot explain why it is barely growing at all.

對一些人而言，這是再正常不過的了，根本無需擔憂。但是，結構性力量可以解釋貿易為什麼增長得更慢，卻解釋不了貿易為什麼幾乎不增長。

In fact, there are three more short-term explanations for the weak trade numbers, which should demand the attention of policymakers.

實際上，對於貿易數據疲軟，還有三個短期解釋應該引起政策制定者的注意。

The first is that global investment demand continues to fall short. For several years, emerging market economies bucked the trend but capital spending has now slowed in such countries as well. This translates into lower trade growth because capital goods are more trade-intensive. It matters because it does not just dampen growth today but could also limit growth in the future by further slowing growth in productivity.

第一，全球投資需求持續不足。新興市場經濟體曾在數年時間裏頂住這一趨勢，但如今這些國家的資本支出也放緩了。因為資本產品的貿易密集度較高，這就壓低了貿易增長。這關係重大，因為這不僅抑制當前的增長，還會進一步減緩生產率的提高，從而抑制未來增長。

Another warning from the trade data is that the recovery in domestic demand in the US and Europe this year is not being seen elsewhere. Latin America appears to have contracted between the end of March and the beginning of July, and JPMorgan estimates that Asian emerging market economies — excluding China — grew by just 1.4 per cent. China is doing better but not nearly as well as it was. This weakness is worrying at a time when many governments in such countries have less room to ease policy than they did before and are already dealing with weak commodity prices and a stronger dollar.

貿易數據發出的另一個警報是：今年以來美國和歐洲出現的國內需求復甦，並沒有在其他地區出現。拉美在3月底至7月初似乎出現了萎縮，同時據摩根大通(JPMorgan)估計，除中國以外，亞洲新興市場經濟體僅增長1.4%。中國表現更好，但遠不及過去的水平。這種疲弱令人擔憂，因為這類國家中許多政府放寬政策的空間比過去更小，同時它們還正在應對疲弱的大宗商品價格和美元走強。

Last weekend, Beijing announced new measures to revive demand through stronger exports — including a slightly more flexible currency. I doubt the Chinese authorities are about to engineer a big depreciation in the renminbi when they are also trying to develop its role as a reserve currency, and Chinese companies have borrowed so much in dollars. But the pressures are clearly there.

最近北京宣佈多項新舉措，通過加強出口來重振需求——其中包括採用略微提高人民幣匯率彈性。考慮到中國政府正努力推動人民幣成為一種儲備貨幣，且中國企業借入了許多美元，我認為中國當局應該不會策劃讓人民幣大幅貶值。但壓力顯然是擺在那裏的。

That highlights the final lesson: in today’s global economy, governments should not be trying to reflate their economies on the back of a weak currency alone. Since coming to power in 2012, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, has done much to help his country’s economy, but one thing Abenomics has not accomplished is to increase exports. Many European policy洀愀欀攀爀猀 think the weak euro has been the making of the eurozone recovery. But it has not yet. Net trade made a negative contribution to eurozone growth in the first three months of 2015 and trade’s contribution is likely to be barely positive for the rest of 2015.

這就凸顯了最後一個教訓：在當今的全球經濟中，政府不應僅靠貨幣貶值來推動本國經濟再膨脹。自2012年執政以來，日本首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)為促進日本經濟做了很多工作，但安倍經濟學沒有做到的一點就是增加出口。很多歐洲政策制定者認為，歐元走軟推動了歐元區復甦。但實際情況並不是這樣。2015年頭3個月，淨貿易對歐元區增長的貢獻為負，而在2015年餘下時間裏，貿易對增長的貢獻也很可能只能勉強達到正數。

For all the talk about the euro, the single most encouraging aspect of Europe’s recovery since the turn of the year has been the strength of domestic demand. But private capital investment in the eurozone is still flat and has been even weaker than in the US since 2010.

儘管各方對歐元念念不忘，但今年以來歐洲復甦最鼓舞人心的一個方面是國內需求強勁。但是歐元區私人部門資本投資依然表現平平，而且自2010年以來一直比美國更加疲軟。

If consumption and investment firm up on both sides of the Atlantic, we should start to see global trade pick up as well. But policymakers should not kid themselves that trade is going to rescue them from their domestic economic travails as in the past.

如果大西洋兩岸的消費與投資都上升，我們應該能開始看到全球貿易的回暖。但政策制定者不應自欺欺人地認為，貿易能像過去那樣讓他們從國內經濟的陣痛中解脱出來。