美国不能把经济问题归咎中国
2022-12-23 08:45阅读：
美国贸易代表戴琪要么是过于天真，要么是愤世嫉俗。但如果她是前者，就可能不会升到华盛顿最高层。戴琪指责中国在过去“20年”中通过实行“以国家为中心和非市场的贸易做法”，造成全球经济市场扭曲。她还声称中国导致美国人失去工作、收入和制造能力。从中国进口的低价商品激增，对美国经济造成“实在且具有毁灭性的”冲击。
戴琪的说法显然是荒谬的。是美国选择去工业化。该进程始于1980年代，在冷战结束后更是加速。这要求将其生产能力转移到拥有廉价和丰富劳动力的发展中经济体——长期以来这都意味着转移到中国——由此推动了一波贸易全球化浪潮。这也让美国从工业资本主义转变为金融资本主义，即不是通过制造东西来赚钱，而是用钱生钱，或者更确切地说，是从高度复杂的金融工具和公司服务中赚钱。
这是美国政府和企业精英做出的选择，带来美国工人阶级失去工作和降低生活水平的结果。美国不只是顺应潮流，而是推动了所谓的“中美国”，即两国经贸关系的共生体系。它本可以选择其他发展中经济体，但中国确实符合要求，并且在正确的时间出现在正确的地点。
当你停止制造某些东西时，就要从别人那里买。为支付外国商品，必然会造成长期贸易逆差和国家债务。这对大多数国家都不是好事，而美国却不同。事实上，美国一直非常受益于此，这也被称为美国“过分的特权”。美元作为世界主要储备货币，是巩固其金融主导地位的基础，而这反过来又支持其全球军事霸权。或许听上去有悖常理，但美国长期的贸易逆差巩固着其“过分的特权”以及美元的主导地位和储备货币地位。这相应地使美国能主导和支配全球金融体系，让对敌方的制裁成为可能。在这个旋转木马中，世界一直资助着美国的主导地位，尽管美国更愿称之为“基于规则的国际秩序”。
新自由主义和货币主义从 1980 年代开始成为主流意识形态，
它们为美国转向金融资本主义提供了理由。然而，最近为对抗崛起的中国并与之脱钩，美国要重新调整部分工业产能，并保护其认为具有战略意义的产业的供应链。因此，至少就目前而言，自由市场和新自由主义过时了，产业政策回归了。但没人知道这是否可持续。金融资本主义对华尔街和美国亿万富翁来说非常有利，他们为什么要放弃轻松赚大钱的机会而只是为了对付中国呢？
The United States cannot blame China for its economic
troubles
Alex Lo
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is either excessively naive
or cynical. But you probably would not rise to the top in
Washington by being the former. Tai has accused China of causing
market distortions to the global economy in the past “20 years” by
practising “state-centred and non-market trade practices”.
Against the recent records and the actual experience of most of our
adult lives, she claims China has caused the loss of American jobs,
income and manufacturing capabilities. As a result of the surge in
low-priced imports from China, “real and devastating” impact has
been caused to the US economy.
“For too long, the PRC’s unfair policies and practices undercut
American prosperity, suppressed labour rights, and weakened
environmental standards,” she said.
Tai’s claims are patently absurd. The United States chose to
deindustrialise. That started in the 1980s but accelerated
especially after the Cold War. This called for the offshoring of
its production capacities to developing economies with cheap and
abundant labour – for a long time, that meant China – thereby
promoting a wave of trade globalisation. It also led to the switch
from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism in the US.
Instead of making things to make money, you make money from money
or rather from highly complex financial instruments and corporate
services.
That was a choice that America’s governing and corporate elites
made, with the resultant loss of jobs and living standards for the
working class in the US.
The US didn’t just go along but promoted what was called
“Chimerical”, the symbiotic system of economic and trade relations
between the two countries. It could have picked another developing
economy, but China did fit the bill and was in the right place at
the right time.
For much of the post-war era, Germany and Japan played a comparable
part.
When you stop making things, you need to buy them from someone
else. That necessarily creates a chronic trade deficit and national
debt to pay for foreign goods. That’s bad for most countries, but
not the US. In fact, it has been extremely beneficial and has been
called its “exorbitant privilege”. It is what underpins its
financial dominance with the US dollar being the world’s main
reserve currency, which in turn subsidises its global-military
hegemony.
It means you can print money as much as you want to pay for imports
and ever-rising debt while your currency still, probably, will not
collapse, unlike the currency and trade position of every other
country.
This is because the US dollar is always in demand, around the
world, for people and countries to trade with each other and with
the US. It may be counterintuitive but the chronic US trade deficit
underpins its exorbitant privilege as well as the dollar’s
dominance and reserve currency status.
These in turn allow the US to dominate and dictate the global
financial system, making sanctions against enemies possible. Even
its enemies need US dollars! In this merry-go-round, the world has
been subsidising the US to dominate it, though the US prefers to
phrase it as “the rules-based international system”.
China is not an outlier but a typical example. Japan, Germany,
South Korea and others followed the same industrial-policy script
for national economic development in the same or similar way as the
US after the end of its civil war and the British Empire before
that.
But neoliberalism and monetarism took over from the 1980s as the
dominant ideologies – small government, a free market and
unregulated finance. They provided the justification for the US
switch to financial capitalism. Yet, recently, to counter and
decouple from a rising China, the US needs to reshore some
industrial capacities as well as protect supply chains for what it
considers strategic industries such as advanced
semiconductors.
So, at least for now, the free market and neoliberalism are out;
industrial policy is back. But who knows whether that’s
sustainable. Financial capitalism has been great for Wall Street
and US billionaires. Why would they want to give up that gravy
train just to take on China?
