Amid charges and counter-charges, the US-China conflict has now moved squarely into the danger zone.
在指控和反指控中，中美冲突已经直接滑入危险地带。
And in light of the sharp recent escalation of pressures from the American side — the early May hike in tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese exports to the US along with a promise of more to come on the remaining $325 billion of exports, together with a full frontal assault in Huawei — even the odds of a cosmetic agreement are slipping by the day.
而华盛顿习惯性打压中国的嗜好已经上升到一个新高度（Washington's penchant for China bashing has been taken to an entirely new level）。
共和党和民主党在刁难中国这一点上难得地达成了一致。
Republicans and Democrats agree on very little these days. But blaming China for America’s economic ills resonates across the political spectrum.
共和党和民主党现今很难达成一致意见。但指责中国是造成美国经济困境的罪魁祸首，却成为美国政界的和鸣。
Once the pro-business constituency of free trade, the Trump takeover of the Republican Party has now embraced tariffs with open arms.
特朗普曾是自由贸易的支持者，政策亲商，但如今接管了共和党，却对关税张开了双臂。
For pro-working class Democrats, many of whom have long warned of the perils of globalization and trade liberalization, the transformation into tariff warriors has been relatively easy.
After years of abusive trade practices, goes the shared bipartisan rhetoric, it is high time America stood up against China.
在做了多年的违规贸易之后，两党来了一番共同论调：美国是时候站出来反对中国了。
美国打压中国，
甚于当年对待日本
斯蒂芬·罗奇认为，今天美国对中国的攻击力度已经远远超出了30年前对日本的打压。
Back then, the US manufacturing sector was experiencing its first taste of pressures on jobs and real wages that could be traced to a sharply widening trade deficit. A mercantilist Japan, fixated on suppressing the value of the yen and accounting for about 42% of the total US merchandise trade deficit in the first half of the 1980s, was the culprit.
This led to the so-called Plaza Accord of 1985, when the so-called G-5 coalition of leading industrial nations put Japan in a straight-jacket of currency appreciation that led to asset bubbles and a string of lost decades of economic stagnation and deflation.
And so Washington has embraced different and tougher tactics to address a Chinese threat that it judges to be far more serious than that which arose from Japan back in the late 1980s.
从打压日本到打压中国，美国总是将自己视为受害者，把自己造成的经济问题归咎于他人（blame others for economic problems that are very much of its own making）。
然而，美国这种推卸责任的行为与宏观经济学（macroeconomics）最基本的原理背道而驰。
经济学专业的学生都知道简单的国民收入核算恒等式，即投资等于储蓄。
这个问题带来的必然结果就是：
When nations are short of saving and want to invest and grow, they must borrow surplus saving from abroad and run current account deficits in order to attract the foreign capital.
当各国缺乏储蓄，又希望投资和增长时，他们必须从国外借入盈余储蓄，并常年保持账户赤字，从而吸引外资。
These balance-of-payments deficits — which the US has experienced in every year since 1982 (with the exception of 1991, when the US ran a small surplus by charging other nations for its military campaign to wage the Gulf War) — are a recipe for trade deficits.
But since the trade deficits stem from macro saving-investment imbalances, they tend to be broad based, or multi-lateral, in scope. Indeed, in 2018, the United States had merchandise trade deficits with 102 countries.
Yes, China accounted for fully 48% of America’s massive $879 billion merchandise trade deficit in 2018. That makes it a lightning rod in the current US policy debate. Eliminating the Chinese piece of the deficit, goes the argument, is the only way to “make America great again” and thereby alleviate pressures on American workers.
If it were only that easy. For a saving-short US economy, there is no bilateral fix for a multilateral problem.
要是有这么简单就好了。对于储蓄不足的美国经济，多边问题没有双边解决办法。
这是一场“打鼹鼠”游戏
如今，美国把火力都对准了中国，对于这种做法，斯蒂芬·罗奇打了一个比方：
A China-centric solution is like “whack-a-mole.”
以中国为核心的解决方案就像“打鼹鼠”游戏。
因为根本问题并未得到解决：
Eliminating one piece of the trade deficit without fixing the saving problem — a very real possibility in light of a further depression of domestic saving following from the ill-timed Trump tax cuts of late 2017 — simply means that trade will be diverted from China to other foreign producers.
Inasmuch as China is one of America's lowest cost foreign suppliers, that means the trade diversion will invariably go to higher cost foreign producers — the functional equivalent of a tax hike on American consumers.
The answer is as much an outgrowth of hegemonic overreach as it is a reflection China's alleged unfair trading practices.
答案既是霸权扩张的结果，也是针对所谓中国的不公平贸易行为的反映。
With the dollar pre-eminent as the world's reserve currency, the United States has developed a sense of entitlement toward open-ended budget deficits that are funded by dollar-denominated debt issuance in its own currency.
Never mind the inefficiencies of a healthcare system that eats up 18% of GDP, or a defense budget that is essentially equal to the combined military outlays of the next seven largest defense budgets around the world.
Washington would rather pursue fiscal recklessness than come clean with the American public. And it would rather blame the consequences of such a strategy on the trading practices of others than take a long hard look in the mirror.
China has been charged with a number of so-called Section 301 violations of the US Trade Act of 1974 and vilified, accordingly, in the arena of US public opinion.
中国被指控违反所谓《1974年贸易法》第301条的多项规定，也由此遭到美国公众舆论的严重诋毁。
Yet the evidence behind such allegations is flimsy at best and outright misleading at worst.
然而，这些指控背后的证据往好了说是站不住脚，往严重了说，完全是误导。
Apparently, it is much easier to find comfort in the false narrative than to accept responsibility for fiscal excesses and saving shortfalls that spawn the macroeconomic imbalances that give rise to multilateral trade deficits.
This is pure political theater at its worst — underscoring the folly of a bilateral fix for a multilateral problem. As noted above, the bilateral fix is a recipe for trade diversion that does next to nothing in providing lasting relief for American workers and consumers.
最重要的是，单纯解决双边贸易逆差并没有触及到长久威胁两国局势的结构性问题（the fixation on the bilateral trade deficit fails to address the structural issues that threaten lasting tensions between the two nations）。
而市场准入就是这些结构性问题中的一个：
Market access is at the top of that list — the opportunity of multinational corporations in both nations to invest freely in each other's markets. The US claims that China's joint venture requirements imposed on such investments is a recipe for forced technology transfer.
As highlighted in the March 2018 Section 301 report of the US Trade Representative (USTR), this charge has become the poster child of the US-China dispute and the foundational evidence for Trump’s tariffs. This has occurred despite the fact that the USTR admits (on page 19 of the March 2018 report) that there is no direct evidence to support the allegation that technology transfer is forced by joint ventures that represent voluntary agreements between US and Chinese partners. Once again, the false narrative apparently matters more than fact-based analytics.
Market access is best addressed through the formalization of cross-border investment rules and standards that are stipulated in a bilateral investment treaty (BIT).
市场准入最好是通过双边投资协定中规定的跨境投资规则和标准的正规化来解决。
The United States currently has 42 BITs on the books and China has 145. Under a BIT, foreign ownership caps can be eliminated, thereby rendering joint ventures unnecessary and taking allegations of forced technology transfer off the table.
Prior to the 2016 presidential election in the United Sates, the US and China spent 10 years attempting to negotiate a BIT. Stymied by Trump’s tariffs, those negotiations have been suspended.
Restarting BIT negotiations would be the single best strategy to resolve the thorny issue of forced technology transfer.
重启双边投资协定谈判将是解决棘手的技术转让问题的主要策略。
?Trans Pacific Partnership.
跨太平洋伙伴关系。
The political decision to abrogate America's commitment to TPP in the first days of the Trump presidency was a mistake. This multilateral agreement provided a high-quality framework linking 12 nations accounting for 40% of world GDP through cross-border trade liberalization, labor standards, intellectual property rules, Internet protocols, and environmental norms.
With China on the outside looking in, TPP would have provided a powerful mechanism for Chinese conformity to many of the structural norms that are currently being contested. While a rethinking of America’s TPP strategy may not be politically possible for President Trump, it may well be a realistic option after the 2020 presidential election.TPP将为中国遵守目前备受争议的许多结构性规范提供一个强有力的机制。虽然对特朗普总统来说，重新考虑美国的TPP战略在政治上是不可能的，但在2020年总统大选之后，这很可能是一个现实的选择。
?Global cyber accord.
全球网络协议。
Like the trade conflict, this is not a bilateral problem. The US and China should take the lead in forging a global cyber accord, complete with pooled metrics of cyber incursions, attack-reduction targets and a robust dispute-resolution mechanism.
The United States and China are on a collision course. The world’s two largest economies have accounted for fully 44% of world GDP growth since 2008. If they opt for a superficial resolution or fail to come to terms on their trade conflict, the global economy could well falter. Resolution is possible but it won’t be easy in the current climate.
Saving-short America's bipartisan political support of China bashing is especially problematic in threatening to turn a trade war into a protracted and destructive economic cold war. Now, more than ever, a fragile world is in desperate need of political will and wisdom — and a leadership courage that is sorely lacking today.
