当年怎么对付日本，现在美国就想怎么对付中国

《世界报业辛迪加》5月27日刊登耶鲁大学杰克逊全球事务学院高级研究员斯蒂芬·罗奇文章《彼时日本，现时中国》

文：Stephen S. Roach

译：由冠群

1985年9月，美日达成《广场协议》后，时任美国总统的罗纳德·里根评论道：“其他国家政府若许可本国企业伪造或仿制美国产品，则是在偷窃我们的未来，就不再是自由贸易行为。”今天的情况从很多方面来看，都像是在翻拍这部上世纪八十年代的老电影，只不过这次美国总统的扮演者不再是好莱坞影星，而是一个电视真人秀明星，并且这次他们找来另一个国家取代日本扮演反派角色。

回首上世纪八十年代，当时的日本被描绘成美国经济面对的头号威胁——它被指控的罪名不光是盗窃知识产权，还包括操纵日元汇率、国家支持产业政策、使美国制造业空心化，造成庞大的美日贸易赤字等等。日本在与美国对峙的过程中，成了那个先眨眼睛的人，并为此付出了极其昂贵的代价——在“失落的三十年”里，日本经济停滞、通货紧缩。现在，有人想让同样的剧情上演，只不过把日本换成了中国。

除了重商主义，中日两国还有另一个共同点：它们都是美国自身经济问题的替罪羊。美国有个坏习惯，喜欢把自己的问题怪罪在别国头上。跟上世纪八十年代抨击日本一样，今天美国抨击中国的根本原因还是自身宏观经济失衡现象越来越险恶。美国国内储蓄大幅缩水导致经常账户逆差和贸易逆差，这是相隔三十年，美国与两个亚洲经济巨人开战的共同背景。

1981年1月，当里根刚就任美国总统时，美国国内净储蓄率为国民收入的7.8%，经常账户基本平衡。但就在接下来两年半的时间里，里根广受欢迎的减税政策导致美国国内储蓄率骤降至3.7%，经常账户和商品贸易差额出现了永久性赤字。从这个角度上讲，美国所谓的贸易问题很大程度上是自己造成的。

然而里根政府却不承认这一点。他们几乎完全没有认识到储蓄与贸易失衡之间的联系，却把日本当作的罪魁祸首，后者与美国的贸易差额占八十年代前五年美国商品贸易逆差的42%。从此美国开始处处抨击日本，称其贸易行为不公且非法。当时冲在第一线的美方贸易副代表是个年轻人，他的名字叫作罗伯特·莱特希泽。

快进30余年来到当下，你会发现此情此景与当年过于相似，以至于有些刺眼。与里根不同的是，特朗普总统接手的美国经济没有当年那么充沛的储蓄。2017年1月特朗普上任时，美国国内净储蓄率仅为3%，不足里根就职初期的一半水平。不过特朗普和他的前辈一样，也很会说漂亮话：里根连任竞选时提出“美国迎春晓”的动人口号来粉饰自己的减税政策，而同样实行大幅减税的特朗普则提出了“让美国再次伟大”。

可以预料，这样做必然导致联邦预算赤字扩大。一般来说，随着经济扩张期走向成熟私人储蓄往往会飙升，但联邦预算赤字则极大地抵消了这种周期性的储蓄增量。因此，到2018年年底，美国国内净储蓄率实际上已降至国民收入的2.8%，这使美国的国际收支产生巨大赤字——经常账户逆差占GDP的2.6%，商品贸易逆差达到GDP的4.5%。

就在此时，中国登场了，它扮演的角色和日本上个世纪八十年代一样。表面上看，中国对美国经济的威胁比当年的日本更大。毕竟，2018年美国商品贸易逆差里来自中国的份额达到了48%，超过了日本八十年代前期所占的42%。但这种比较本身是扭曲的，因为上世纪八十年代还没有全球供应链这回事。经合组织和世贸组织的数据显示，美中双边贸易逆差里有大约35%~40%源于中国以外的产品，它们只不过在中国境内组装并海运至美国。这意味着在今天美国的贸易逆差里面，真正由“中国制造”造成的部分实际上小于上世纪八十年代日本的份额。

就像八十年代美国抨击日本一样，今天美国在抨击中国时也颇有心机地忽略了更大的宏观经济背景。这是一个严重的错误。在美国当前的预算形势下，国民储蓄率将很难得到提高，而若不提高储蓄，美国的对外贸易不外乎从对华贸易转向与其它国家的贸易。这种简单的贸易转移可能导致生产流向成本更高的地方，最终落到美国消费者头上时跟加税没什么两样。

不论面对的是今天的中国还是当年的日本，美国的做法都是拒不承认现实，几乎靠虚妄来欺骗自己。里根政府陶醉于未经检验的供给侧经济学当中，尤其是所谓减税可以自我负担成本（译注：即认为减税有助于刺激经济增长和就业，从而提高政府税收，抵消政府因减税而失去的收入）的理论，未能理解不断增加的预算赤字和贸易逆差之间的关系。今天，低利率和现代货币理论这种最新的“巫毒经济学”都充满魅惑力，吸引着特朗普政府和美国国会两党在抨击中国时达成一致。

储蓄不足的美国之所以对严峻的宏观经济限制视而不见，自然有它的理由：因为没有哪个政治群体会赞成通过削减预算赤字来提高国内储蓄，进而减少贸易逆差。美国鱼和熊掌都想要，其医疗保健系统开支占GDP的18%，国防开支超过紧随其后的七个国家军事预算的总和，而其减税政策则使联邦政府收入占GDP的比重从过去50年的均值17.4%降至现在的16.5%。

今天的美国想要故技重施再次上演美日贸易冲突的桥段，这种做法令人感到十分不安。美国再一次发现，抨击其他国家要比量入为出简单得多。然而这一次，电影的结局可能与三十年前大不相同。

Japan Then, China Now

“When governments permit counterfeiting or copying of American products, it is stealing our future, and it is no longer free trade.” So said US President Ronald Reagan, commenting on Japan after the Plaza Accord was concluded in September 1985. Today resembles, in many respects, a remake of this 1980s movie, but with a reality-television star replacing a Hollywood film star in the presidential leading role – and with a new villain in place of Japan.

Back in the 1980s, Japan was portrayed as America’s greatest economic threat – not only because of allegations of intellectual property theft, but also because of concerns about currency manipulation, state-sponsored industrial policy, a hollowing out of US manufacturing, and an outsize bilateral trade deficit. In its standoff with the US, Japan ultimately blinked, but it paid a steep price for doing so – nearly three “lost” decades of economic stagnation and deflation. Today, the same plot features China.

Notwithstanding both countries’ objectionable mercantilism, Japan and China had something else in common: They became victims of America’s unfortunate habit of making others the scapegoat for its own economic problems. Like Japan bashing in the 1980s, China bashing today is an outgrowth of America’s increasingly insidious macroeconomic imbalances. In both cases, a dramatic shortfall in US domestic saving spawned large current-account and trade deficits, setting the stage for battles, 30 years apart, with Asia’s two economic giants.

When Reagan took office in January 1981, the net domestic saving rate stood at 7.8% of national income, and the current account was basically balanced. Within two and a half years, courtesy of Reagan’s wildly popular tax cuts, the domestic saving rate had plunged to 3.7%, and the current account and the merchandise trade balances swung into perpetual deficit. In this important respect, America’s so-called trade problem was very much of its own making.

Yet the Reagan administration was in denial. There was little or no appreciation of the link between saving and trade imbalances. Instead, the blame was pinned on Japan, which accounted for 42% of US goods trade deficits in the first half of the 1980s. Japan bashing then took on a life of its own with a wide range of grievances over unfair and illegal trade practices. Leading the charge back then was a young Deputy US Trade Representative named Robert Lighthizer.

Fast-forward some 30 years and the similarities are painfully evident. Unlike Reagan, President Donald Trump did not inherit a US economy with an ample reservoir of saving. When Trump took office in January 2017, the net domestic saving rate was just 3%, well below half the rate at the onset of the Reagan era. But, like his predecessor, who waxed eloquently of a new “morning in America,” Trump also opted for large tax cuts – this time to “make America great again.”

The result was a predictable widening of the federal budget deficit, which more than offset the cyclical surge in private saving that normally accompanies a maturing economic expansion. As a result, the net domestic saving rate actually edged down to 2.8% of national income by late 2018, keeping America’s international balances deep in the red – with the current-account deficit at 2.6% of GDP and the merchandise trade gap at 4.5% in late 2018.

And that’s where China assumes the role that Japan played in the 1980s. On the surface, the threat seems more dire. After all, China accounted for 48% of the US merchandise trade deficit in 2018, compared to Japan’s 42% share in the first half of the 1980s. But the comparison is distorted by global supply chains, which basically didn’t exist in the 1980s. Data from the OECD and the World Trade Organization suggest that about 35-40% of the bilateral US-China trade deficit reflects inputs made outside of China but assembled and shipped to the US from China. That means the made-in-China portion of today’s US trade deficit is actually smaller than Japan’s share of the 1980s.

Like the Japan bashing of the 1980s, today’s outbreak of China bashing has been conveniently excised from America’s broader macroeconomic context. That is a serious mistake. Without raising national saving – highly unlikely under the current US budget trajectory – trade will simply be shifted away from China to America’s other trading partners. With this trade diversion likely to migrate to higher-cost platforms around the world, American consumers will be hit with the functional equivalent of a tax hike.

Ironically, Trump has summoned the same Robert Lighthizer, veteran of the Japan trade battles of the 1980s, to lead the charge against China. Unfortunately, Lighthizer seems as clueless about the macro argument today as he was back then.

In both episodes, the US was in denial, bordering on delusion. Basking in the warm glow of untested supply-side economics – especially the theory that tax cuts would be self-financing – the Reagan administration failed to appreciate the links between mounting budget and trade deficits. Today, the seductive power of low interest rates, coupled with the latest strain of voodoo economics – Modern Monetary Theory – is equally alluring for the Trump administration and a bipartisan consensus of China bashers in the US Congress.

The tough macroeconomic constraints facing a saving-short US economy are ignored for good reason: there is no US political constituency for reducing trade deficits by cutting budget deficits and thereby boosting domestic saving. America wants to have its cake and eat it, with a health-care system that swallows 18% of its GDP, defense spending that exceeds the combined sum of the world’s next seven largest military budgets, and tax cuts that have reduced federal government revenue to 16.5% of GDP, well below the 17.4% average of the past 50 years.

This remake of an old movie is disconcerting, to say the least. Once again, the US has found it far easier to bash others – Japan then, China now – than to live within its means. This time, however, the movie might have a very different ending.