特朗普夸口了，看看那些年美国输过的贸易战

美国总统特朗普说，赢得贸易战轻而易举，但如果仔细回顾历史，会发现答案截然相反。最著名的贸易保护主义落败案例当属上世纪30年代美国的斯姆特-霍利关税法（Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act）。法案问世时，全世界其他地区也出台了类似的保护主义措施。当时，保护主义重创全球贸易，美国经济大萧条形势恶化。自那以后，美国走上了推动贸易自由化的道路，而且每当美国单边脱离正轨，往往会代价惨重。

尼克松任美国总统期间，为了稳定美国对日本等国家迅速扩大的贸易逆差，他没有加息和限制财政预算，而是选择临时大范围征收关税和美元与黄金脱钩，推动上世纪70年代美国陷入经济滞胀。2002年，为保护美国企业，时任美国总统的小布什对进口钢铁征收关税，不过遭到了世界贸易组织（WTO）其他成员国的强烈抵制，美国钢铁制造业的就业岗位没挽回多少，还影响了供应链下游产业的就业增长。最终，小布什悄然撤除了关税。

美国智库彼得森国际经济研究所的专家彼得·肖特指出，当前特朗普政府的保护主义姿态让美国贸易政策进入了未知局面。因为出于国家安全理由，这些举措看似合理。虽然WTO一直允许成员国为保护国家安全征收关税，但成员国很少真正行动，主要担心WTO没法判断何为成员国的国家安全利益。肖特说，美国援引WTO规则征收关税可以看成对WTO的警告，相当于特朗普政府宣布WTO没能力公平仲裁贸易争端。

随着特朗普政府质疑多年来全球贸易政策的根基，美国的贸易伙伴将如何回应还很难说。不过欧盟已经警告称，将对美国肯塔基州产的威士忌和摩托车哈雷·戴维森摩托车等产品征收关税作为报复。也就是说，欧盟不会善罢甘休。（财富中文网）

译者：Feb 

President Trump says that winning a trade war is easy, but a closer look at history suggests otherwise. Of course, the most famous example of protectionism gone awry is 1930’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act—which along with similar protectionist measures enacted around the globe—helped torpedo world trade and exacerbate the Great Depression. Since that time U.S. has charted a course toward freer world trade, but when it has unilaterally deviated from that direction, it has usually paid a price.

President Nixon helped usher in the era of stagflation in the 1970s by relying on temporary across-the-board tariffs and currency revaluation rather than higher interest rates and budgetary restraint to stabilize rapidly growing trade deficits with countries like Japan. In 2002, President Bush implemented his own across the board tariffs on steel to protect American companies, but those measures hit fierce resistance by other members of the World Trade Organization, and were quietly lifted without doing much to staunch the loss of steel manufacturing jobs, while hurting job growth further down the supply chain.

The current administration’s proposal takes U.S. trade policy into uncharted waters, says Peter Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, because it is being justified on national security grounds. Though the WTO has always allowed members to institute tariffs to protect national security, these provisions have been little used, for fear that the international body is simply not equipped to decide what constitutes a member country’s national security interests. The tariffs’ underlying justification should be read as a shot across the bow to the WTO itself, Schott says, suggesting that the Trump Administration has “written off” the WTO’s ability to fairly arbitrate trade disagreements.

With the administration questioning the very foundations of a generation of global trade policy, it’s tough to know just how U.S. partners will react, but the European Union’s threat to institute retaliatory tariffs against goods like Kentucky bourbon and Harley Davidson motorcycles, suggests they won’t take it lying down.