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广州贸易翻译公司:西方引领贸易繁荣的时代结束了?

作者: 来源: 日期:2016-10-27 8:29:41

Sluggish global trade growth is here to stay

西方引领贸易繁荣的时代结束了?

 

广州贸易翻译公司:沃尔夫:西方引领贸易繁荣的时代似乎已经结束。若贸易增长复苏,那可能也是由中国和印度这两个亚洲大国所推动。

 

Is globalisation reversing? No, but it has lost dynamism, notably in the case of trade, the motor of global economic integration for decades. The question, however, is why trade’s growth has fallen. Is it because the world economy has slowed? Is it because of the exhaustion of certain opportunities? Or is it because of protectionism? The answer, suggests the International Monetary Fund in its latest World Economic Outlook , is “yes” to all three hypotheses, to varying degrees.

全球化正在逆转吗?没有,但它失去了动力,尤其是从几十年来充当全球经济一体化引擎的贸易的角度来看。然而,问题在于,贸易增长为何放缓?是因为全球经济放缓?因为某些机遇消耗殆尽?还是因为保护主义?据国际货币基金组织(IMF)最新发布的《世界经济展望》(World Economic Outlook),答案是这3个原因全都“成立”,只是程度各有不同。

广州贸易翻译公司。

 

Between 1960 and 2015, world trade grew at an average rate of 6.6 per cent, in real terms, while output grew at an average rate of 3.5 per cent. Between 2008 and 2015, however, average annual growth of world trade was just 3.4 per cent in real terms, while world output grew at 2.4 per cent. Not only has the growth of trade slowed, but the gap between trade growth and that of output also fell sharply. (See charts.)

1960年到2015年,按实际值计量,世界贸易平均增长率达到6.6%,同时产值平均增长率为3.5%。然而,从2008年到2015年,世界贸易年均增长率按实际值计量仅为3.4%,同时全球产值年均增长2.4%。不仅贸易增速放缓,而且贸易增速与产值增速之间的差距也急剧缩小。广州贸易翻译公司。

 

The IMF concludes that the weak growth in trade volumes is largely a result of the synchronised economic slowdown in advanced and emerging economies. It also adds that, “Among goods, trade growth fell for 85 per cent of product lines, with the sharpest slowdown observed in trade in capital and intermediate goods.” The post-crisis slowdown in investment was therefore particularly significant, the IMF argues, because it is relatively import-intensive. This shift in the composition of global output helps explain why the slowdown in world trade was proportionately bigger than in output. In all, “up to three-fourths of the decline in real goods import growth between 2003–07 and 2012–15 can be traced to weaker economic activity”.

IMF认为,贸易额增长疲弱在很大程度上是发达经济体和新兴经济体经济增长同步放缓的结果。它还补充称,“在商品领域,85%的产品系列贸易增长放缓,其中资本品和中间产品的贸易增长放缓最为明显”。IMF认为,后危机时代的投资放缓因此尤其显著,因为投资相对而言是进口密集型的。全球产值构成的变化帮助解释了世界贸易增长放缓程度为何比产值增长放缓程度大得多。总的来说,“从2003年到2007年以及从2012年到2015年,高达四分之三的实际商品进口值增长下降可以溯源至经济活动减弱。” 广州贸易翻译公司。

 

This analysis suggests that world trade will recover, provided the world economy and investment do so. The position is, however, not as simple as that. The IMF also focuses on two other factors that it shows to be important: protectionism and the post-crisis halt in the longer-term tendency towards rising trade within “value chains”.

这种分析表明,只要世界经济和投资复苏,世界贸易就会复苏。然而,当前情况并非如此简单。IMF还聚焦于其认为重要的另外两个因素:保护主义,以及“价值链”内部贸易的较长期增长趋势在危机后停滞。

 

The division of labour among economies, in which some make components that are assembled in others, has created greater trade within such chains of production since the 1990s. This can be measured by the import content in a country’s exports, together with the domestic content of exports subsequently used by trading partners in their own exports, all divided by gross exports. This ratio rose up to 2008, but has stagnated since then. That marks at least a halt to a significant form of integration of production across borders.

自上世纪90年代以来,不同经济体之间的劳动分工——一些经济体制造零部件,然后由其他国家组装——促进了生产链内部的贸易。这可以通过如下方式衡量:一国出口商品中所包含的进口成分价值,加上该国出口给贸易伙伴国用于制造出口商品的材料中所包含的国内成分价值,然后除以出口总值。这个比率到2008年一直在上升,但自那以后停滞。这标志着至少有很大一部分的跨境生产一体化陷入了停滞。

 

The story on protectionism may not be entirely independent of that on value chains. Here, too, the story is nuanced. The decline in average tariffs halted in the early 2000s, as reductions agreed in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations and China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation ran their course. Evidence also exists of a recent rise in non-tariff barriers to trade. At the same time, the coverage of free-trade agreements has continued to grow, albeit at a slightly slower rate. The fate of the most ambitious arrangements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (agreed, though not ratified) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (very far from agreed), remains quite uncertain.

保护主义的情况与价值链的情况或许不是毫无关联。二者同样微妙。随着乌拉圭回合的多边贸易谈判达成削减关税协议,以及中国按部就班地加入世贸组织(WTO),平均关税下降的趋势在本世纪初停滞。此外还有证据表明,近年非关税的贸易壁垒有所增多。与此同时,自由贸易协定的覆盖范围继续扩大,尽管速度略有放缓。《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》(Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement,简称TPP)和《跨大西洋贸易与投资伙伴关系协定》(Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)这两项最为宏大的贸易协定的命运依然相当不确定,前者虽然已经签署,但还未得到签署国的批准,后者则远未达成一致意见。广州贸易翻译公司。

 

For such reasons, notes the IMF, rates of growth of imports between 2012 and 2015 have fallen about 1.75 percentage points short, on average, of what would have been expected from historical relationships between trade flows and global activity. It is also possible that trade’s slowdown has, in turn, contributed to weaknesses in growth, including productivity growth.

出于以上原因,IMF指出,从2012年到2015年期间,平均而言,进口增速比根据贸易流动和全球经济活动的历史关系推导出来的水平低了大约1.75个百分点。此外,贸易增长放缓反过来也可能导致了增长(包括生产率增长)疲弱。

 

 

So what might happen in future?

那么未来可能发生什么情况?

 

Political obstacles to big new trade liberalising agreements — whether multilateral (within the World Trade Organisation) or plurilateral (such as TPP or TTIP) — have become high. This is partly because enthusiasm for trade liberalisation is weak. But it is also because today’s trade agreements carry a great deal of largely extraneous regulatory baggage: intellectual property rights are one example; protection accorded investors is another. In particular, many now argue that the “investor-state dispute settlement” procedures included in many such agreements represent an infringement of democratic sovereignty. The Walloon parliament has just blocked the “comprehensive economic and trade agreement” between Canada and the EU for just such reasons.

达成新的大型自由贸易协议将面临巨大的政治障碍,无论是世贸组织框架下的多边协议还是TPPTTIP此类诸边贸易协议。这在一定程度上是因为贸易自由化的热情下降。但还有一个原因是如今的贸易协定包含大量基本上与贸易无关的监管内容:知识产权是一个例子;投资者保护是另一个例子。更特别的是,如今有不少人认为,许多此类协定中包含的“投资者与政府间纠纷解决”程序代表着对民主主权的侵犯。最近瓦隆地方议会就是基于此类原因,反对加拿大与欧盟签署“全面经济和贸易协定”。广州贸易翻译公司。

 

Still more threatening than such reluctance to liberalise is the rise of primitive forms of outright protectionism. Donald Trump, Republican nominee for the US presidency, is foremost in making such arguments. Indeed, he suggests that blocking imports would magically revive the jobs in manufacturing that existed when, in his view, the US was “great”. Yet, as Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University notes, “the decline in manufacturing employment has been ongoing for half a century”. Shares in employment have fallen with the steady decline of manufacturing in total US output, though at a faster rate, because of rapid productivity growth in this sector. No trade policy could reverse this trend, which is driven by changes in demand and technology. Manufacturing is simply following the trajectory once trodden by agriculture.

比这种不愿推进贸易自由化的情绪更具威胁性的是,原始形式的纯粹保护主义的兴起。美国共和党总统候选人唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)就擅长发表此类主张。实际上,他表示,抑制进口将会奇迹般地恢复在美国“伟大”时期存在的制造业岗位。然而,正如哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)的贾格迪什•巴格瓦蒂(Jagdish Bhagwati)指出的那样,“制造业就业人数的下降已持续了半个世纪”。随着美国制造业产值占整体经济产值的比重稳步下降,制造业就业人数占整体就业人数的比例也相应下降,只是降速更大一些,因为制造业生产率增长快速。任何贸易政策都无法扭转这一趋势,它是受到需求变化和科技变革推动的。制造业只是重蹈农业曾经的轨迹。

 

With luck, such simple-minded protectionism will fail politically: it certainly cannot solve the problems of distressed former and would-be workers. But a renewed burst of trade liberalisation is far off. Trade would start growing more quickly if global economic growth accelerated. But a world in which trade grew far faster than output is probably now in the past, partly because opportunities for expanded processing trade have diminished, and partly because the era of large-scale trade liberalisation is over. Moreover, if it is revived, it will probably be by the Asian giants — China and India. The days of western leadership on trade seem, alas, to be over.

如果幸运的话,此类思维简单的保护主义在政治上会行不通:它当然无法解决失业者和未来劳动者的困境。但贸易自由化再次兴盛遥遥无期。如果全球经济增长加速,贸易增长将会开始加速。但贸易增长明显快于产值增长的时代可能一去不复返了,部分原因是扩大加工贸易的机遇已经消失,还有部分原因是大规模贸易自由化的时代已经结束。此外,如果贸易增长复苏,那可能也是中国和印度这两个亚洲大国推动的。西方引领贸易繁荣的时代似乎已经结束。

 

广州贸易翻译公司

 

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