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Donald Trump believes that a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit with the rest of the world makes the United States a loser and countries with trade surpluses like China and Mexico winners.
唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)认为，美国对世界其他国家的5000亿美元贸易逆差使得美国成为输家，而中国、墨西哥等实现贸易顺差的国家成为赢家。
“They're beating us so badly,” he has said. “Every country we lose money with.”
“它们狠狠地击败了我们，”他曾说过。“每一个赚了我们钱的国家都打败了我们。”
The reality is different. Trade deficits are not inherently good or bad; they can be either depending on circumstances. The trade deficit is not a scorecard.
事实并非如此。贸易逆差本身没有好坏；这要看情况。贸易逆差不是记分卡。
What's more, eliminating the trade deficit wouldn't, on its own, make America great again, as Trump suggests. And trying to do so could mean giving up some of the levers of power that let the United States get its way in international politics.
此外，消除贸易逆差本身不会促使美国像特朗普说的那样，恢复伟大荣光。这么做可能意味着放弃一些使美国在国际政治领域获得成功的权力杠杆。
Getting rid of the trade deficit could very well make America less great. And the reasons have to do with the global reserve currency, economic diplomacy and something called the Triffin dilemma.
摆脱贸易逆差可能恰恰会削弱美国的实力。原因与国际储备货币、经济外交及所谓的特里芬难题有关。
What Is the Trade Deficit?
什么是贸易逆差？
Imagine a world where there are only two countries, and only two products. One country makes cars; the other grows bananas.
想象一下，世界上只有两个国家、两种商品的情况。一个国家制造汽车，另一个种植香蕉。
People in CarNation want some bananas, so they buy $1 million worth from people in BananaLand. Residents of BananaLand want cars, so they buy $2 million of them from CarNation.
汽车国的居民想购买香蕉，他们就从香蕉国买了价值100万美元的香蕉。香蕉国的居民想买汽车，他们花了200万美元从汽车国买入。
That difference is the trade deficit: BananaLand has a $1 million trade deficit; CarNation has a $1 million trade surplus.
这种差别就造成了贸易逆差：香蕉国有100万美元的贸易逆差；汽车国则有100万美元的贸易顺差。
But this does not mean that BananaLand is “losing” to CarNation. Cars are really useful, and BananaLandites got a lot of them in exchange for their money.
但这不意味着香蕉国就“输给了”汽车国。因为汽车真的很有用，香蕉国的居民用自己的钱换了很多汽车。
Similarly, it's true that the United States has a $58 billion trade deficit with Mexico, for example. But it's not as if that's just Americans flinging money across the Rio Grande out of charity. Americans get a lot of good stuff for that: avocados, for example, and Cancun vacations.
同样地，美国是对墨西哥有580亿美元的贸易逆差，但你不能因此觉得美国好像是出于善心在朝格兰德河(Rio Grande)另一边大把地撒钱。美国人用这些钱换了很多不错的商品：比如买鳄梨，及坎昆的度假时光。
If you want to think of it in terms of winners and losers, in fact, you could justifiably reverse Trump's preferred framing: “Those losers in Mexico gave us $58 billion more stuff than we gave them last year. Ha, ha, ha. We're winners.”
实际上，如果你想从输赢的角度看这个问题，完全可以把特朗普提出的逻辑反过来：“相比于我们卖给他们的，墨西哥那些笨蛋去年多给了我们580亿美元的货品。哈哈哈，我们是赢家。”
But when a country runs a trade deficit, as the United States does, there is a countervailing force. Think back to our pretend countries. BananaLand has a $1 million trade deficit with CarNation. But that means that car producers in CarNation are sitting on an extra $1 million a year in income.
然而，如果一个国家像美国这样出现贸易逆差，同时就会出现一股反作用力。再拿我们之前假定的两个国家来说。香蕉国对汽车国有100万美元的贸易逆差，这意味着汽车国的汽车生产商一年会多出100万美元的营收。
Something has to happen with that $1 million, and both of the two options have consequences.
他们必须考虑如何处置这100万美元资金，而仅有的两种选择，都会带来相应的后果。
One option is to keep that money at home. But keeping that money inside their own country will push the value of the CarNation currency upward. And as its currency goes up, cars will become more expensive in BananaLand — causing people there to buy fewer of them until eventually the trade deficit is eliminated.
一种选择是把这笔钱留在国内，但这会导致汽车国的货币升值。而随着货币升值，汽车在香蕉国的售价也会增高，导致那里的人们汽车购买量下降，直到将之前存在的贸易逆差拉平。
If CarNation doesn't want its currency to rise, it has to take that $1 million trade surplus and plow it back into BananaLand. There are different ways it could do that. People in CarNation could buy stocks or bonds in BananaLand, or companies in CarNation could invest in factories in BananaLand, or the government of CarNation could buy assets directly.
如果汽车国不想让自己的货币升值，就必须将这100万美元的贸易顺差资金再投资到香蕉国去。它有多种不同的途径可以实现这一点。可以通过汽车国的居民购买香蕉国的股票或债券，或者通过汽车国的企业在香蕉国投资建厂，再或者汽车国的政府直接购买香蕉国的资产。
The choice is stark: A country running a trade surplus must either let its currency rise or let money flow back to its trading partners.
这是一项残酷的抉择：出现贸易顺差的国家要么得眼看着本国货币升值，要么就得把资金投回贸易伙伴国。
This isn't just an abstraction. It's what has happened between the United States and China for the last couple of decades. China has had consistent trade surpluses, but it did not want its currency to rise in a way that would undermine its exporters. So money has flowed from China into the United States — both from the Chinese government buying U.S. Treasury bonds and more recently in the form of direct investment from Chinese companies into the United States.
这可不只是一种抽象的推理。这是过去几十年美国和中国之间真实发生的事。中国持续出现贸易顺差，但它不想让货币升值，损害本国出口商的利益。所以资金就从中国流入美国——其方式既有中国政府购买美国国债，也包括最近中国企业在美国进行的直接投资。
When you see a headline about a Chinese company buying an American hotel group for $13 billion, you're seeing the flip side of the trade deficit Trump bemoans. (The same when a citizen of China buys a luxury apartment in a Trump tower.) Money flowing into a country is usually considered a good thing. It makes borrowing money cheaper, drives up stock prices and can mean more investment in new businesses.
当你看到有关一家中国企业以130亿美元购买一家美国酒店集团的头条新闻时，你所看到的正是特朗普哀叹的美国贸易逆差的另一面。（一名中国公民在特朗普大厦[Trump tower]购买豪华公寓的情况，也是如此。）资金流入一个国家，通常被看作一件好事。它会使该国贷款更加容易，会推高股票价格，也意味着更多投资流向新企业。
Wouldn't It Be Better if the U.S. Didn't Run a Deficit?
如果美国没有贸易逆差，岂不是更好？
It's not clear that that's even an option, because the dollar isn't used just in trade between the United States and other countries.
我们甚至不确定，自己到底有没有这样一个选择，因为美元不止被用于美国和其他国家之间的贸易。
The dollar is a global reserve currency, meaning that it is used around the world in transactions that have nothing to do with the United States. When a Malaysian company does business with a German company, in many cases they will do business in dollars; when wealthy people in Dubai or Singapore's government investment fund want to sock away money, they do so in large part in dollar assets.
它是一个全球通用的储备货币，这意味着在全世界进行的各种和美国无关的交易中，也有可能用到它。当一家马来西亚企业和一家德国公司做生意时，他们很可能会用美元进行交易；迪拜的富裕阶层和新加坡的政府投资基金想储存一部分资金时，大部分也会选择购买美元资产。
That creates upward pressure on the dollar for reasons unrelated to trade flows between the United States and its partners. That, in turn, makes the dollar stronger, and American exporters less competitive, than they would be in a world where nobody used the dollar for anything except commerce involving the United States.
这些和美国及其伙伴之间的贸易往来无关的原因，给美元造成了升值的压力。比起除了涉及美国的贸易之外谁都不用美元的情景，这会让美元更坚挺，并导致美国出口商的竞争力下降。
The roughly $500 billion trade deficit that the United States runs each year isn't just about poorly negotiated trade deals and currency manipulation by this or that country. It's also, to some degree, a byproduct of the central role the United States plays in the global financial system.
美国每年约5000亿美元的贸易逆差不仅涉及不利的贸易协议或某个国家操纵货币。它在一定程度上也是美国在全球金融体系中所起的核心作用带来的副产品。
There's even a name for this: the Triffin Dilemma. In the mid-20th century, the economist Robert Triffin warned that the provider of the global reserve currency would need to run perpetual trade deficits to keep the world financial system from freezing, with those trade deficits potentially fueling domestic booms and busts.
这种情况甚至还有个专门的名字，叫作“特里芬难题”(Triffin Dilemma)。20世纪中叶，经济学家罗伯特·特里芬(Robert Triffin)警告，全球储备货币的供应国可能需要持续不断地承受贸易逆差，以避免世界金融体系冻结，而这些贸易逆差会潜在地推动国内市场的兴衰。
The key idea is that if a President Trump or any other future leader really wants to reduce our trade deficits in a major way, they're going to have to rethink the very underpinnings of global finance.
关键的一点是，倘若特朗普总统或将来任何什么领导人想大幅削减贸易逆差，他们都必须重新考虑全球金融的基础。
If Being the Global Reserve Currency Means Bleeding Jobs Overseas, Why Do It?
如果说，成为全球储备货币意味着就业岗位流向海外，那为何还要成为这样的货币？
Be careful what you wish for.
许下心愿的时候要当心。
There's no doubt that being the global reserve currency creates costs for the United States, namely a less competitive export industry.
毋庸置疑，成为全球储备货币的确让美国付出了代价，即出口行业的竞争力被削弱。
But it also creates a lot of advantages. Lower interest rates and higher stock prices are one (though that has the downside of also feeding debt-driven booms and busts). Even more important is what the dollar's prominence in global finance does for America's place in the world.
但它也带来了很多优势。低利率和高股价便是其中之一（尽管它们也有不利的一面，即加剧债务驱动的繁荣和衰退）。更重要的是美元在全球金融中的显赫声望对美国的世界地位的影响。
It helps ensure that the United States can afford to finance wars, and gives the government greater ability to fight recessions and panics. A country experiencing a banking panic will see money sent out of the country, causing its currency to fall and its interest rates to rise. All that limits a government's options for fixing the problem. In 2008, when the United States experienced a near-collapse of the banking system, the opposite happened.
它有助于确保美国能经受得起金融战争，并会增强政府抗击衰退和恐慌的能力。经历银行业恐慌的国家会面临资金出逃，导致本国货币贬值、利率升高。所有这些都会限制政府用于解决问题的可选方案。然而，2008年当美国经历银行系统几近崩溃时，却出现了截然相反的情况。
But it's not just economics. “A lot of the benefits of having the reserve currency are more on the foreign policy side than the economic,” said Jennifer M. Harris, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a coming book, “War by Other Means,” on the use of economic tools in foreign policy.
不过，此事的影响不仅限于经济领域。“比起经济方面，成为储备货币带来的许多好处在外交政策方面更胜一筹，”对外关系委员会(Council on Foreign Relations)高级研究员珍妮弗·M·哈里斯(Jennifer M. Harris)说。她的著作《其他形式的战争》(War by Other Means)即将面世，内容关于在外交政策中使用经济工具。
The centrality of the dollar to global finance gives the United States power on the global stage that no other country can match. It has enforced sanctions on Iran, Russia, North Korea and terrorist groups with the implicit threat of cutting off access to the dollar payments system for any bank in the world that doesn't cooperate with American foreign policy.
美元在全球金融中的核心地位，让美国在全球舞台上拥有了其他任何国家都无法匹敌的权力。美国对伊朗、俄罗斯、朝鲜和恐怖组织实行制裁的时候，隐含的威胁是，世界上一切不配合美国外交政策的银行，都可被拦在美元支付体系之外。
Part of what makes the United States powerful is the great importance of the dollar to global finance. And part of the price the United States pays for that status is a stronger currency and higher trade deficits than would be the case otherwise.
让美国大权在握的部分原因正是美元在全球金融中的重要作用。而美国为此付出的部分代价是，比起美元不是全球金融核心的情景，现实中美元要更坚挺，贸易逆差更大。
The debate over the trade deficit is about more than Mexico and China, cars and bananas, or winning and losing. It's about what makes America great, and which of the country's priorities should come first.
围绕贸易逆差的辩论不仅涉及墨西哥和中国、汽车和香蕉，或者谁输谁赢，还关乎是什么让美国变得强大，以及哪一项议程应该排在第一位。
翻译：许欣、常青、陈亦亭
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