【英语社会】奥巴马应积极支持自由贸易

All through the presidential election campaign, Barack Obama blew hot and cold on trade. In tones reminiscent of Bill Clinton and the New Democrats, he often spoke persuasively about embracing globalisation and welcoming international competition. The US could not prosper by hiding from the world economy, he said. Yet he was second to none among the candidates in questioning specific trade pacts. He attacked the North American Free Trade Agreement and said it should be renegotiated. He threatened companies that invest abroad rather than “keeping jobs at home”. This equivocation has carried through to his trade policy appointments.Mr Obama's US trade representative (his chief international negotiator) will be Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, a leading proponent of Nafta and a long-time supporter of liberal trade. His appointment disappoints the president's supporters on the left of the party. The new labour secretary has them applauding, however: she is Hilda Solis, an ally of the unions, a leader in Congress of opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement and a forthright critic of orthodox liberal trade.

The new commerce secretary, announced earlier, will be Bill Richardson. Running against Mr Obama for the Democratic nomination, the former governor of New Mexico expressed qualified support for Nafta, but called for “fair trade, not just unabashed free trade”, and underlined the need to address “wage disparities” between the US and its partners. Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, will doubtless also have a say: he will be the closest thing in Mr Obama's circle to an outright free-trader.

Together, these four cover the full range of opinion within the Democratic party (and beyond). So it will be surprising if the Obama administration manages to speak clearly on the issue. Opinion in the next Congress, with its enlarged Democratic majorities, would have shifted to a more hostile position on trade even if the economy had been healthy – which it is not. With unemployment rising, wages under pressure and no firm countervailing push from the administration, protecting jobs (or claiming to, at any rate) is likely to be a higher priority than liberal trade. The prospects for widening the opportunities for international commerce look grim.

Since this is a global recession, the danger of an upsurge in protectionist sentiment is not confined to the US. The consequences of that would be all the more threatening against a background of already shrinking output and trade flows. American leadership on the issue has never been more important.

The one encouraging point, perhaps, is that the future of liberal trade depends much less than it used to on pressing forward with ambitious trade liberalisation agreements. This is one of the key points in a brilliant short survey of trade policy by Razeen Sally of the London School of Economics and the European Centre for International Political Economy. (In Britain, it is published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, and entitled Trade Policy, New Century; in the US, the Cato Institute is the publisher and the title is New Frontiers in Free Trade.)

Mr Sally argues persuasively that the World Trade Organisation and the multilateral approach to trade liberalisation is mostly a spent force. The failure of the Doha round points up the need for “greater modesty and realism”, he says. New preferential trade agreements of the kind lately favoured by the US are not the answer either. Especially in the prevailing political climate, they will be designed in order to strike political compromises rather than free up commerce. They entrench complex patterns of discrimination among trading partners that are as much a hindrance to liberal trade as a help.

Lately, Mr Sally points out, the most successful instances of trade liberalisation in the developing world have been unilateral (as in China, for example). With time, the success of those initiatives will be the best spur to further liberalisation. The logic of multilateralism – which sees the lowering of trade barriers by poor countries as a sacrifice for which rich countries must pay compensation – has always been economically illiterate, but increasingly it is politically counterproductive as well. Developing countries object to being leaned on and the US and other rich countries lack the political capacity to offer the quid pro quo.

The great risk is that the traditional exchange-of-concessions approach might degenerate into its logical near-equivalent – an exchange of reprisals. Though one can always hope, the Obama administration is unlikely, whatever happens, to strive very hard to lower remaining US barriers to imports. The harder it pushes for “fair trade” with poorer countries, either bilaterally or through the WTO, the worse is the danger of backsliding all round. Averting a protectionist turn in US policy should be the administration's top priority in trade. “Do no harm” and “set a good example” should be the watchwords.

This is a tougher assignment than it sounds. It requires, first, a private intellectual commitment by the new president to the case for liberal trade – and this, in view of his statements during the campaign, must be in doubt. It also requires an investment of political capital and a willingness to advocate open domestic markets as the best way to secure long-term US prosperity. The new president has plenty of capital, and if anybody can persuade the public of the virtues of liberal trade, it is Mr Obama. But this is a message that much of the country and most of his political allies are in no mood to hear.

总统竞选期间，巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)自始至终在贸易问题上摇摆不定。他常很有说服力地谈及拥护全球化和欢迎国际竞争，那种语调让人想起比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)和“新民主党人”。他说，美国不能靠躲避世界经济而求得繁荣。然而，在质疑具体贸易协定的人物中，也没有人比得上他。他攻击《北美自由贸易协定》(North American Free Trade Agreement)，说应该重新议定。他威胁在海外投资而不是“保持国内就业岗位”的企业。他的这种含糊态度延续到了他对一众贸易政策官员的任命上。奥巴马内阁中的美国贸易代表（他的首席国际谈判员）将由前达拉斯市市长荣•柯克(Ron Kirk)担任，他是《北美自由贸易协定》的主要拥护者之一、自由贸易的长期支持者。他的任命让支持总统的党内左翼人士感到失望。但是新任劳工部长得到了他们的赞许：她就是希尔达•索利斯(Hilda Solis)，工会的支持者，国会里反对《中美洲自由贸易协议》(Central American Free Trade Agreement)的领袖，直截了当批评正统自由贸易的人士。

新一任商务部长在早些时候宣布将由比尔•理查森(Bill Richardson)出任。这位曾与奥巴马竞争民主党候选人提名的前新墨西哥州州长，虽然表达了对《北美自由贸易协定》有条件的支持，但也呼吁“公平贸易，而不仅仅是不加掩饰的自由贸易”，并强调必须解决美国及其伙伴之间的“工资不平等”。国家经济委员会(National Economic Council)主席劳伦斯•萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)肯定也将有发言权：在奥巴马的圈子里，他最接近于彻头彻尾的自由贸易人士。

这四位合在一起，就包罗了民主党内部（和对外）的一整套意见。所以，如果奥巴马政府能够在此问题上言辞清晰，那才是怪事。随着下一届国会中民主党领先多数的扩大，即使经济健康（实际上不是），国会在贸易方面的意见也将转向更不友善的立场。由于失业上升、工资受到压力，加上政府也没有坚定的补偿性努力，保护就业（或至少声称这样）的优先级别有可能高于自由贸易。扩大国际商务机会的前景看起来不妙。

由于这是一次全球性衰退，贸易保护主义情绪激升的危险不限于美国。在产出和贸易流已在收缩的背景下，那样的后果威胁性只会更大。美国在此问题上的带头作用从来没有这般重要过。

或许，鼓舞人心的一点是，自由贸易的未来与它过去相比，对通过雄心勃勃的贸易自由化协议来推进这一方式的依赖要小得多。伦敦政治经济学院(London School of Economics)和欧洲国际政治经济研究机构(European Centre for International Political Economy)的拉齐恩•萨利(Razeen Sally)提出了一份漂亮而简短的贸易政策调查报告，在报告中，这是关键点之一。（在英国，由经济事务研究所(Institute of Economic Affairs)出版发行，题名为《贸易政策，新世纪》(Trade Policy, New Century)；在美国，由卡托研究所(Cato Institute)出版发行，题名为《自由贸易新疆界》(New Frontiers in Free Trade)。）

萨利用令人信服的语气指出，世界贸易组织和为实现贸易自由化而采取的多边做法现在已经难有作为。他表示，多哈回合的失败突显了“更大谦逊和现实主义”的必要性。近来美国所支持的那种新的优惠贸易协定也不是解决办法。尤其是在当前主流政治气候下，它们的制定将是为了达成政治妥协而非让贸易自由化。它们在贸易伙伴之间筑起各种形态复杂的歧视，对于自由贸易的妨碍和帮助一样大。

萨利指出，近来发展中世界里贸易自由化最成功的例子一直是单边的（例如在中国）。随着时光流逝，这些举措的成功将是对进一步自由化的最好激励。虽然多边主义的原理——穷国降低贸易壁垒，作为代价，富国必须支付补偿——在经济上总是说不通的，但在政治上也日益适得其反。发展中国家反对被胁迫，而美国和其他富国缺少给予等价代偿的政治能力。

巨大的风险在于，传统的互相让步的方法可能退化成原理上近似相当的互相报复。虽然人们总是可以希望，但不管发生什么，奥巴马政府也不太可能十分努力地降低美国剩余的进口壁垒。它越是卖力地与比较穷的国家推进“自由贸易”，不管是以双边还是通过世贸组织的方式，全面倒退的危险就越严重。避免美国的政策转向贸易保护主义应是政府在贸易问题上最优先考虑的问题。“无害”和“树立榜样”应成为口号。

这项工作做起来比听上去更难。首先，它需要新总统把个人精力致力于自由贸易事务——这一点，鉴于他在竞选期间的声明，必然是存在疑问的。这项工作还需要政治资本的投入，以及倡导把开放国内市场作为求得美国长期繁荣最佳手段的意愿。新总统有充足的资本，如果有谁能说服公众接受自由贸易的好处，那么非奥巴马莫数。但对于这条信息，美国国内多方和奥巴马的大多数政治盟友，现在没心情去倾听。

译者/红岭