好英语网特朗普是如何输掉这场贸易战的
Trade wars rarely have victors. They do, however, sometimes have losers. And Donald Trump has definitely turned out to be a loser.
贸易战鲜有胜利者。但有时会有失败者。而且唐纳德·特朗普绝对是个失败者。
Of course, that’s not the way he and his team are portraying the tentative deal they’ve struck with China, which they’re claiming as a triumph. The reality is that the Trump administration achieved almost none of its goals; it has basically declared victory while going into headlong retreat.
当然，他和他的团队是不会这样形容与中国达成的临时协议的，他们声称这是胜利。现实情况是，特朗普政府几乎没有实现任何目标；基本上可以说是在宣告胜利后仓皇撤退。
To understand what just went down, you need to ask what Trump and company were trying to accomplish with their tariffs, and how that compares with what really happened.
要了解真正发生了什么，你要去问特朗普和他的团队，他们究竟想通过加征关税实现什么，以及现实是否如此。
First and foremost, Trump wanted to slash the U.S. trade deficit. Economists more or less unanimously consider this the wrong objective, but in Trump’s mind countries win when they sell more than they buy, and nobody is going to convince him otherwise.
首先，特朗普想大幅度削减美国的贸易逆差。经济学家或多或少都一致认为这是一个错误的目标，但在特朗普的想法中，当一个国家卖的多、买的少就赢了，没人能说服他。
So it’s remarkable to note that the trade deficit has risen, not fallen, on Trump’s watch, from $544 billion in 2016 to $691 billion in the 12 months ending in October.
然而值得注意的是，在特朗普任职期间，贸易逆差不减反增，从2016年10月的5440亿美元增加到次年10月的6910亿美元。
And what Trump wanted in particular was to close the trade deficit in manufactured goods; despite giving lip service to “great Patriot Farmers,” it’s clear that he actually has contempt for agricultural exports. Last summer, complaining about the U.S. trade relationship with Japan, he sneered: “We send them wheat. Wheat. That’s not a good deal.”
特朗普尤其想要消除制造业产品的贸易逆差，尽管他对“伟大的爱国农民”信誓旦旦，但显然他看不起农产品出口。去年夏天，在抱怨与日本的贸易关系时，他冷笑道：“我们给他们送去了小麦。小麦。这不是个好交易。”
So now we appear to have a trade deal with China whose main substantive element is … a promise to buy more U.S. farm goods.
那么现在我们似乎和中国达成了一项贸易协议，其主要实质内容是……购买更多美国农产品的承诺。
So why did Trump wimp out on trade?
那么为什么特朗普在贸易上这么畏手畏脚呢？
At a broad level, the answer is that he was suffering from delusions of grandeur. America was never going to succeed in bullying a huge, proud nation whose economy is already, by some measures, larger than ours — especially while simultaneously alienating other advanced economies.
从广义上讲，他被宏伟的妄想所蒙蔽。压制一个辽阔且自豪、经济完备并在某些方面比美国还大的国家，美国永远不可能成功——更何况同时还在疏远其他的发达国家。
At a more granular level, none of the pieces of Trump trade strategy have worked as promised.
从比较细节的层面看，特朗普的贸易战略里没有一样像承诺的那样起效。
Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that China is paying his tariffs, the facts say otherwise: Chinese export prices haven’t gone down, which means that the tariffs are falling on U.S. consumers and companies. And the bite on consumers would have gone up substantially if Trump hadn’t called off the round of further tariff increases that had been scheduled for this past Sunday.
特朗普一再坚称是中国在支付他的关税，但事实却并非如此：中国出口价格并未下降，这意味着关税落在了美国消费者和公司的头上。如果特朗普没有取消原定于上周日加征的那轮关税，消费者的负担将会大幅增加。
At the same time, Chinese retaliation has hit some U.S. exporters, farmers in particular, hard. And while Trump may quietly hold farm exports in contempt, he needs those rural votes — votes that were being put at risk despite a farm bailout that has already cost more than twice as much as Barack Obama’s bailout of the auto industry.
同时，中国的报复严重打击了美国的出口商，尤其是农民。特朗普也许可以悄悄地蔑视农产品出口商，但他需要那些来自农村的选票——尽管对农业的援助已经是贝拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)对汽车业援助的两倍之多，他仍面临失去这些票的危险。
Finally, uncertainty over tariff policy was clearly hurting manufacturing and business investment, even as overall economic growth remained solid.
最终，尽管总体经济增长保持稳定，但关税政策的不确定性显然正在损害制造业和商业投资。
So Trump, as I said, basically declared victory and retreated.
因此，正如我所说，特朗普基本上是宣布获胜然后撤退。
Will Trump’s trade defeat hurt him politically? Probably not. Many Americans will surely buy the spin, and the trade war was never popular anyway.
特朗普的贸易失利会在政治上伤害他吗？可能不会。许多美国人无疑会听信这一套把戏，而且反正贸易战从来都不受欢迎。
Furthermore, voting mostly reflects the economy’s direction, not its level — not whether things are good, but whether they’ve been getting better recently. It may actually be good political strategy to do stupid things for a while, then stop doing them around a year before the election, which is a fair summary of Trump’s trade actions.
此外，投票主要反映的是经济走向，而不是经济水平——不是事情是否是好的，而是它们近期是否正在有所好转。实际上，做一番愚蠢的事，然后在大选前一年停止，可能是个好的政治策略，其实就是特朗普贸易行动的一个合理总结。
There will, however, be longer-term costs to the trade war. For one thing, the business uncertainty created by Trump’s capriciousness won’t go away; he is, after all, a master of the art of the broken deal.
但是，贸易战将带来长期的代价。一方面，特朗普反覆无常所造成的商业不确定性不会消失；他毕竟是做糟糕交易的大师。
Beyond that, Trump’s trade antics have damaged America’s reputation.
除此以外，特朗普在贸易上的古怪举动还损害了美国的声誉。
On one side, our allies have learned not to trust us. We have, after all, become the kind of country that suddenly slaps tariffs on Canada — Canada! — on obviously spurious claims that we’re protecting national security.
一方面，我们的盟友懂得了不要信任我们。毕竟我们已经成为突然对加拿大征税的国家——加拿大！——还用保护国家安全这种明显站不住脚的理由。
On the other side, our rivals have learned not to fear us. Like the North Koreans, who flattered Trump but kept on building nukes, the Chinese have taken Trump’s measure. They now know that he talks loudly but carries a small stick, and backs down when confronted in ways that might hurt him politically.
另一方面，我们的竞争对手懂得了不用惧怕我们。就像朝鲜人一边奉承特朗普一边制造核武器一样，中国人也摸清了特朗普有几斤几两。他们现在知道了特朗普雷声大雨点小，而且在用政治上会给他带来伤害的方式对付他时，他会退缩。
These things matter. Having a leader who is neither trusted by our erstwhile friends nor feared by our foreign rivals reduces our global influence in ways we’re just starting to see. Trump’s trade war didn’t achieve any of its goals, but it did succeed in making America weak again.
这些东西很重要。有一个既不被我们以前的盟友所信任，又不被我们的外国对手所惧怕的领导者，将会降低我们的全球影响力，这一迹象才刚刚开始显现。特朗普的贸易战没有实现任何目标，但它成功地让美国再次筋疲力竭。