By David Fickling  大卫·菲克林

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.  大卫·菲克林是彭博社的专栏作家，专注于气候变化和能源。此前，他曾在彭博新闻、华尔街日报和金融时报工作。

A common maxim of trade wars is that the best retaliation is not to retaliate at all.
贸易战的一个常见格言是，最好的报复就是根本不报复。

Such conflicts, after all, are counterproductive in the first place. Raising levies on imports simply increases costs for domestic consumers, more than offsetting the benefits that local producers may enjoy from the higher prices they receive from the shift in spending. The best solution is just to stand aloof from this contest of economic self-harm, however much you’re provoked.
毕竟，这种冲突在第一时间就是适得其反的。提高进口关税只会增加国内消费者的成本，远远抵消了当地生产者可能因消费支出转移而获得的更高价格所带来的好处。最好的解决方案就是在这种经济自我伤害的竞争中保持冷静，无论你受到多大的挑衅。

That’s the case with most economies — but China, which has announced a 34% import tax against all US goods in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz earlier last Wednesday, may be a rare exception. That’s because the world’s biggest manufacturer has spent decades building an economy that’s already largely war-proofed against blowback from its own trade practices.
大多数经济体都是如此——但中国可能是一个罕见的例外，因为中国在上周三特朗普总统的关税攻势后宣布对所有美国商品征收 34%的进口税。这是因为这个世界上最大的制造国花了几十年时间建立了一个在很大程度上已经抵御自身贸易行为反弹的经济。

Consider the main items the nations trade with each other. The major products that the US imports from China are mostly things you’ll find in a Walmart Inc., at a shopping mall, or on Amazon.com Inc.: smartphones, computers, games consoles, furniture, toys and clothing. Slap a 54% tariff on these items, as Trump has done, and American consumers are going to notice pretty soon.
考虑一下各国之间主要的贸易项目。美国从中国进口的主要产品大多是你在沃尔玛、购物中心或亚马逊上能找到的东西：智能手机、电脑、游戏机、家具、玩具和服装。如果对这些商品征收 54%的关税，就像特朗普所做的那样，美国消费者很快就会注意到。

The flow in the opposite direction couldn’t be more different. Most of China’s major imports from the US are intermediate goods for its manufacturing industry, which would be almost impossible for an ordinary consumer to get their hands on, such as LNG and crude oil, silicon chips and chip-making machines, aircraft jets and plastics. The only real exception is cars — and, given the parlous competitive position of the US auto industry in China, wiping out the remnants of Buick, Chevrolet and Ford’s mainland markets might almost be a mercy killing.
反方向的流动截然不同。中国从美国进口的大多数主要商品是其制造业的中间产品，这些产品对于普通消费者几乎不可能获得，例如液化天然气和原油、硅芯片和芯片制造机器、飞机喷气机和塑料。唯一真正的例外是汽车——考虑到美国汽车工业在中国的竞争地位岌岌可危，彻底消灭别克、雪佛兰和福特在中国大陆市场的残余，几乎可以说是一种仁慈的杀戮。

An important thing to note in the charts above is the relative size of the white, gray and blue bars. China tends to have quite a dominant role in US merchandise imports, making it hard for American consumers to switch to alternative suppliers. The US, by contrast, is a relatively minor supplier to China in almost every major product category except jet engines and, to a limited extent, soy. China, meanwhile, has broad and diverse markets for its exports if the US market ends up closed off, as demonstrated by the relatively large blue bars in the first chart.
上述图表中一个重要的事项是白色、灰色和蓝色条形的相对大小。中国在美国商品进口中往往占据主导地位，这使得美国消费者很难转向其他供应商。相比之下，美国在几乎所有主要产品类别中对中国的供应相对较小，除了喷气发动机和在有限程度上大豆。与此同时，如果美国市场最终关闭，中国的出口市场广泛而多样，正如第一张图表中相对较大的蓝色条形所示。

This is an important consideration when you start thinking about each country’s ability to sustain a prolonged trade war. Trump’s tariffs fall mainly on ordinary American citizens and voters who’ve already suffered four years of above-target inflation and are seeing interest rates around their highest levels in nearly two decades.
当你开始考虑每个国家在持续贸易战中维持能力时，这是一个重要的考虑因素。特朗普的关税主要落在普通美国公民和选民身上，他们已经经历了四年的高于目标的通货膨胀，并且看到利率接近近二十年来的最高水平。

The tariffs imposed by China will hurt quite a different group — businesses who are into their third year of producer price deflation, with the benchmark loan prime interest rate at its lowest level on record. Even consumer prices are falling right now.
中国征收的关税将对一个完全不同的群体造成伤害——那些已经进入生产者价格通缩第三年的企业，而基准贷款市场利率处于历史最低水平。即使是消费者价格现在也在下降。

That means that China already has a decent amount of slack to accommodate the supply-side shock from tariffs, whereas the US economy is already busting at the seams.
这意味着中国已经有相当的余地来适应关税带来的供给侧冲击，而美国经济则已经处于极限状态。

Even if Chinese businesses start to feel economic pain as the tariffs squeeze their margins, they’re less likely to complain. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma disappeared from public life for nearly five years after a speech in 2020 criticizing international financial regulations, which local officials appear to have interpreted as a veiled attack on their handling of Alibaba’s payments platform Ant Group Co.
即使中国企业在关税压缩利润时开始感受到经济痛苦，他们也不太可能抱怨。阿里巴巴集团创始人马云在 2020 年发表了一次批评国际金融监管的演讲后，几乎消失在公众视野中近五年，当地官员似乎将其解读为对他们处理阿里巴巴支付平台蚂蚁集团的隐晦攻击。

For President Xi Jinping, Trump’s self-inflicted wound is an opportunity. China can present itself as a better representative of the rules-based international order than a US that did so much to establish that system, and a friendlier trade and investment partner for the 85% of the global economy that’s not within America’s borders. That would put dreams of supplanting the US as the world’s hegemonic power well within reach.
对于习近平主席来说，特朗普自我造成的伤口是一个机会。中国可以将自己呈现为比美国更好的规则基础国际秩序的代表，而美国在建立该体系方面做出了如此多的努力，并且是 85%全球经济中不在美国边界内的更友好的贸易和投资伙伴。这将使取代美国成为世界霸权力量的梦想触手可及。

Both countries have been decoupling from each other since the start of Trump’s first trade war in 2018, but China has done so more effectively. As a share of its exports, the US has slipped 6.6 percentage points to 17.2%, whereas China as a share of US imports is down only 4 percentage points, to 18.5%. Xi, moreover, is using this moment to build ties with other trading nations, while the Trump administration is punishing its allies with tariffs barely less savage than those it’s imposing on Beijing.
自特朗普 2018 年首次贸易战开始以来，两国一直在相互脱钩，但中国的脱钩效果更为显著。美国在其出口中所占的份额下降了 6.6 个百分点，降至 17.2%，而中国在美国进口中的份额仅下降了 4 个百分点，降至 18.5%。此外，习近平正在利用这一时刻与其他贸易国家建立联系，而特朗普政府则以几乎与对北京施加的关税一样严厉的关税惩罚其盟友。

If you want to avoid a future where China cements its rise with tighter links to other countries and crucial roles in blocs such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes most of east Asia’s other large economies, then the US tariff plan is the worst possible outcome. China’s economy has problems right now, but international commerce isn’t one of them. If the world is settling in for a long trade war, Trump’s most formidable rival has already fortified itself.
如果你想避免一个未来，即中国通过与其他国家建立更紧密的联系以及在区域全面经济伙伴关系等集团中发挥关键作用来巩固其崛起，那么美国的关税计划就是最糟糕的结果。中国的经济目前存在问题，但国际商业并不是其中之一。如果世界准备迎接一场漫长的贸易战，特朗普最强大的对手已经为自己筑起了防线。

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Will Republicans Really Let the Global Economy Crash?
共和党人真的会让全球经济崩溃吗？

By Nia-Malika Henderson  作者：尼亚-马利卡·亨德森

Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.  尼亚-马利卡·亨德森是《彭博社》意见栏目的政治和政策专栏作家。她曾是 CNN 和《华盛顿邮报》的高级政治记者，近二十年来一直报道政治和竞选活动。

When President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the US economy was the envy of the world, having managed an unmatched post-Covid comeback. Now, the country could be headed for a recession, pulling down the global economy and Trump’s political fortunes with it.
当唐纳德·特朗普总统就职时，美国经济是世界的羡慕，成功实现了无与伦比的后疫情复苏。现在，这个国家可能正走向衰退，拖累全球经济和特朗普的政治前景。

“Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been talking about it for 35 years,” said Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary during a CNN appearance on Thursday. “You got to trust Donald Trump in the White House.”
“让唐纳德·特朗普来管理全球经济。他知道自己在做什么。他已经谈论这个话题 35 年了，”特朗普的商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克在周四的 CNN 节目中说道。“你必须信任白宫里的唐纳德·特朗普。”

But Americans, by and large, no longer trust Trump on the economy, viewing him as insufficiently focused on lowering prices and his global tariff plan as certain to raise everyday costs. His recent erratic moves will erode that trust even more. In that sense, Trump himself is the biggest threat to his own success.
但总体而言，美国人不再信任特朗普的经济政策，认为他对降低价格的关注不够，而他的全球关税计划必然会提高日常成本。他最近的反复无常的举动将进一步侵蚀这种信任。从这个意义上说，特朗普自己是他成功的最大威胁。

All the while, Trump, exists in a politically perilous state of optimistic oblivion.
与此同时，特朗普处于一种政治上危险的乐观无知状态。

“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom,” he said Thursday in response to the stock market plunge he caused, which erased $5 trillion over two days. (Cold comfort to the 54% of American families with market-based retirement plans.)
“市场将会繁荣，股票将会繁荣，国家将会繁荣，”他在周四回应他造成的股市暴跌时说道，这次暴跌在两天内抹去了 5 万亿美元的市值。（对 54%的拥有市场基础退休计划的美国家庭来说，这无疑是冷 comfort。）

Trump has defiantly vowed that his “policies will never change,” yet the current course seems economically and politically unsustainable, leaving much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the coming weeks, as Trump seeks to bend international trade to his will and push through his legislative agenda in Washington.
特朗普坚定地誓言他的“政策永远不会改变”，然而目前的方向似乎在经济和政治上都不可持续，给未来几周带来了很大的不确定性，因为特朗普试图将国际贸易纳入他的意志，并在华盛顿推动他的立法议程。

A number of factors could prove crucial.
一些因素可能会证明至关重要。

Among them, pushback from Republicans, who have criticized Trump more in the last few days than they have since he won in November. Their constituents, groups like farmers and laid off autoworkers, will likely be short on patience, fueling some senators to oppose Trump’s tariffs. Already, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is spearheading an effort to reassert Congressional control over tariffs. Not only that, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has rarely said anything negative about Trump in years, warned tariffs pose “enormous risks” to the economy and could lead to a “bloodbath” for Republicans in the midterms. A handful of GOP Senators, possibly Cruz, could join Grassley’s efforts — though the measure will likely die in the House, which voted last month to neuter itself on the tariff fight.
其中包括来自共和党人的反对，他们在过去几天对特朗普的批评比自去年 11 月赢得选举以来都要多。他们的选民，如农民和被裁员的汽车工人，可能会缺乏耐心，这促使一些参议员反对特朗普的关税。爱荷华州参议员查克·格拉斯利已经在领导一项重新确认国会对关税控制的努力。不仅如此，德克萨斯州参议员特德·克鲁兹在多年里很少对特朗普说负面话，他警告说关税对经济构成“巨大的风险”，并可能导致共和党在中期选举中出现“血腥屠杀”。一些共和党参议员，可能包括克鲁兹，可能会加入格拉斯利的努力——尽管该提案在众议院可能会夭折，众议院上个月投票决定在关税斗争中自我削弱。

Another factor is the new energy and focus among Democrats. After months of torpor, the party, firmly in the minority in Washington, won a resounding victory in a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, where Elon Musk was a big factor. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who staged a 25-hour history-making speech, also gave Democrats reason to feel hopeful that they might be able to rally anti-Trump sentiment to their benefit. Protests across the country on Saturday showcased liberal voters’ opposition to Trump’s agenda. Later this year, the Governor’s race in Virginia will be another tell, with moderate Democrat Abigail Spanberger clearing the field and the GOP headed for a messy primary fight.
另一个因素是民主党新出现的活力和关注。在经历了几个月的沉闷后，这个在华盛顿处于少数派的政党在威斯康星州的一场州最高法院选举中取得了压倒性的胜利，埃隆·马斯克在其中发挥了重要作用。新泽西州参议员科里·布克进行了长达 25 小时的历史性演讲，这也让民主党人感到有理由希望他们能够利用反特朗普情绪为自己谋利。周六，全国各地的抗议活动展示了自由派选民对特朗普议程的反对。今年晚些时候，弗吉尼亚州的州长选举将是另一个重要指标，温和派民主党人阿比盖尔·斯潘伯格将清空竞争对手，而共和党则面临一场混乱的初选斗争。

But most of all, watch what happens with Trump’s own voters. Trump’s power rests on his bond with the MAGA faithful, who see in him a path to retribution and redemption.
但最重要的是，观察特朗普自己的选民会发生什么。特朗普的权力依赖于他与 MAGA 忠实支持者之间的纽带，他们在他身上看到了报复和救赎的道路。

At the Rose Garden tariff event, where giant American flags formed the backdrop and men in hard hats sat in the audience, Trump spoke directly to their sense of aggrievement.
在玫瑰园关税活动上，巨大的美国国旗作为背景，戴着安全帽的男人们坐在观众席上，特朗普直接对他们的愤懑感进行了讲话。

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said. “But it is not going to happen anymore.” According to a a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 25% of Republicans think Trump’s moves to shake up the economy are too erratic. The same poll, taken before the tariffs were announced, said that 30% of Republicans believe that increasing tariffs on vehicles will have a negative impact. Those numbers will likely increase if there is no tariff pullback and prices noticeably rise.

While some supporters, like podcaster Ben Shapiro, have criticized Trump’s tariffs, the president is protected by an echo chamber that has repeated his talking points about pain now and prosperity later.

“I believe in this man,” said Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro on Thursday, with an almost Biblical fervency, channeling his base.

Their belief in Trump, so far unshakeable, now faces its strongest stress test.

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Will Republicans Really Let the Global Economy Crash?

By Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are getting two thumbs down from pretty much everyone, including a few brave Republicans in Congress, but there is a notable exception: the United Auto Workers, which was vocally critical of Trump during last year’s presidential campaign. Last week, UAW President Shawn Fain hailed Trump “for stepping up to end the free trade disaster that has devastated working class communities for decades.”

There is only one problem. Even in the unlikely event that tariffs do lead to a significant increase in US automobile manufacturing, the jobs are extremely unlikely to return to UAW-organized plants in the Midwest.

On some level, of course, Fain is just playing politics. While former Vice President Kamala Harris did very well with union members in last year’s presidential election, that was mostly because a huge share of union members are teachers or other public-sector employees. Among the kind of blue-collar industrial workers who dominate the public image of organized labor, she did less well — largely for cultural rather than economic reasons. Regardless, Fain’s statement allows him to ride the crosscurrents among his membership, backing the president on tariffs while also criticizing proposals to slash Medicaid.

But Fain is also speaking to a very real sentiment in Midwestern manufacturing communities.

Labor groups strongly opposed NAFTA in the early 1990s, warning that it would lead to both direct job losses to Mexico and to indirect pressure on union members to keep their wages competitive with their less well-paid counterparts in Mexico. As it happens, NAFTA-related job losses were relatively mild. But US manufacturing employment did fall of a cliff in the first decade of the 21st century — more because of competition from China than from Mexico. Regardless, the view that free trade erodes workers’ clout remains prevalent among many Midwesterners, and especially Midwestern union leaders.

They are not entirely wrong. A mix of automation, low-cost imports, and domestic wage restraint delivered almost a quarter-century of falling prices for durable goods for the majority of Americans. Openness to trade helped the economy grow, made most people better off and helped keep Social Security and Medicare sustainable. But that openness was often painful for manufacturing workers and their neighbors.

But just as you can’t squeeze toothpaste back into the tube, you can’t bring back the manufacturing economy of the mid-20th century.

For starters, Trump’s actual trade policies are exceptionally poorly designed for the goal of bolstering US automobile manufacturing. By taxing production inputs, they make it more expensive both to build cars domestically and to import them. The tariffs are also so wide-ranging that analysts are warning of a possible recession in which car sales will plummet.

To make a larger point: We know how to use trade policy to get companies to build auto plants in America rather than make cars elsewhere and export them to the US — because that’s exactly what Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s. Pressure from the White House got Japan to agree to a so-called voluntary restraint agreement, which capped the number of vehicles shipped to the US from Japan. In the short term, this helped the Big Three Automakers maintain market share, and helped the UAW maintain jobs. In the longer term, it spurred Japanese automakers to launch luxury brands such as Lexus and Acura, to maximize the dollar value of their quota — and, eventually, to start building cars in the US.

So Toyota now has factories and assembly plants in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, among other places. Honda has 12 plants in the US, including in Alabama, Georgia and both Carolinas. Other foreign automakers have followed their lead.

This has been a genuine economic-development success story and a boon to the historically poor South. But from the standpoint of the UAW specifically and Midwestern nostalgia politics more broadly, investment in right-to-work states is not ideal. Whatever trade policies the Trump administration adopts, Michigan is going to continue to be in a free-trade zone with Alabama and South Carolina.

This same problem bedeviled President Joe Biden’s administration, which had a much more nuanced and sophisticated industrial policy. For sound reasons related to national security and climate change, Biden wanted to foster US manufacturing in electric cars and high-end batteries. This seems to be working — it remains to be seen if Trump will sabotage it — but a majority of the battery investments are in right-to-work Sun Belt states.

To an extent, this is just a hard-luck situation for which there are no easy solutions. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the UAW’s dreamworld — no NAFTA, no permanent normal trade relations with China and no Sun Belt transplants with non-union workers — is pretty far-fetched.

Is it possible for the US automobile industry to become completely severed from the global marketplace, with both higher wages and prices? As a fan of walkable urban neighborhoods, I could live with it. But does this sound like something that would be sustainable? Wouldn’t someone eventually demand that the dramatically cheaper cars available for sale in Mexico and Canada and Europe and Asia be allowed into the American market?

There’s no doubt that the transition to the globalized economy should have been handled better, and there was entirely too much happy talk and wishful thinking about how commerce would lead to world peace and the liberalization of the Chinese political system. But the pressure on the American automobile industry to be cost-competitive isn’t coming from any particular policy or trade deal. It’s the result of an increasingly interconnected world economy. And — much as the president or the UAW would like to pretend otherwise — those demands are not going to vanish or diminish because of tariffs.

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Will Republicans Really Let the Global Economy Crash?