[2008.08.02] 世界贸易：若即若离

World trade
世界贸易

So near and yet so far
若即若离

Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Trade ministers have come too close to a deal to let the Doha round die
多哈回合的谈判即将消逝于贸易大臣们几近达成的协定中

IN MANY examinations, 90% is an excellent score, deserving a prize and a handshake from the headmaster. In Geneva this week, only full marks would do, and the world’s trade ministers failed. No matter that they came closer to a deal than anyone should have expected (see article). No matter that they stuck at it for nine days and several nights, in the longest ministerial meeting in the history of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). No matter, too, that this time they parted in stunned disbelief, heads shaking, rather than in acrimony, recrimination and spite, as at Cancún in 2003. They managed “convergence” on 18 of the 20 topics set before them by Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s director-general, but they stumbled on the 19th, a device for protecting farmers in developing countries against surges in imports. They never reached the 20th, cotton. Failed.
如果一个学生在90%的测验中都取得了极佳成绩，那么绝对应该得到嘉奖以及来自校长的礼遇。但是本周在日内瓦，如此殊荣只属于满分获得者；来自世界各地的贸易大臣们没有成功。即使他们此次达成共识的程度已经超出了任何人之前的期望；即使他们为此付出了9个白天及数个夜晚的努力，并且创造了世贸组织部长级会议有史以来的时间纪录；即使此次会议不象2003年坎昆回合那样剑拔弩张，充满了相互指责和恶意刁难，对不同意见的表达只是采用摇头和阵营的分离。世贸组织总干事Pascal Lamy摆在各国贸易部长面前20个议题，其中的前18个议题都达成了共识；但是却止步于第19个：该议题旨在保护发展中国家农民免受进口的冲击。部长们没有开始讨论关于棉花的第20个议题，这意味着他们失败了。

You can construct a plausible argument that the collapse of yet another set of talks on the Doha round, which is now coming up to seven years old, is of little importance. While the world’s trade ministers have alternated between talking and not talking to one another about Doha, the world’s businesspeople have carried on regardless: the growth of global commerce has outstripped the hitherto healthy pace of global GDP. Developing countries in particular have continued to open up to imports and foreign investment. You might say that not much was on offer in Geneva anyway: one study put the eventual benefits at maybe $70 billion, a drop in the ocean of the world’s GDP. Global stockmarkets, with so much else on their minds, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. On July 29th, the day the talks broke up, the S&P 500 index rose by 2.3%.
你可以想象出一个貌似合理的争论：另一轮无关痛痒得多哈回合谈判又无终而果了，此轮谈判至今已经历时7年。虽然各国的贸易大臣们可以选择是否就多哈话题进行交谈，但是商人们可不管这一套，他们继续着这个话题的讨论：截至目前为止，全球范围内商贸的发展已经查过了GDP的健康增速。发展中国家对进口和境外投资采取特别开放的政策，你可以说这并不是日内瓦所提供的便利：有研究表明最终的获利也许会达到700亿美金，但这个数字对于全球GDP来说不过是沧海一粟。国际股票市场因为有太多需要思考的问题，因此既没有注意到、也没有关心这一现象。在谈判破裂的7月29日，标准普尔500指数上升了2.3%

Plausible, but wrong. For a start, the lowish estimates of the economic benefits of the round miss out two things. One is the value of the unpredictable dynamic benefits of more open markets. Access to more customers allows exporters to exploit economies of scale. Competition encourages not only specialisation, the classic result of more open trade, but also increased productivity. The other is what you might call the “option value” of the Doha round. The WTO inhabits a sort of parallel universe in which countries negotiate not on what tariffs and subsidies will actually be, but on maximum (or “bound”) rates and amounts. Although many countries have cut tariffs and farm subsidies-if only, in the latter case, because of rising food prices-too few have turned these cuts into commitments. Tighter binding would cramp their ability to turn back to protection. It would have made up the bulk of a Doha deal.
貌似合理，实则错误。首先，本轮会谈因为遗漏了两个要点而低估了经济收益：一个要点是开放市场动态收益价值的不可预测性。接触更多的客户使出口商得以深度利用经济杠杆。竞争所催生的不仅是专业化这一传统意义上的典型结果，而且也有效的提高了产能。另一个要点你可以称之为多哈回合的”可选价值”。世贸组织存在于一个类似于平行宇宙的状态：国家间的谈判并不是关于实际存在的关税和政府津贴，而是最高税率或是边际金额。尽管很多国家已经削减了关税和农业补贴，但是鲜有国家将这些削减作为承诺；特别是粮食涨价后政府很难承诺对农业补贴的削减。过于苛刻的约束会阻碍他们采取保护措施的能力，而这必将形成多哈协议的主要内容。

Do you care about the beans or the beings?
你关心的是大豆还是人类

Also on offer were benefits that are easier to visualise. Some cuts in bound tariffs would have bitten into actual rates. There would have been much less “tariff escalation”-a nasty practice, by which higher tariffs are levied on successive stages of production. Raw coffee beans may be tariff-free, but roasted beans incur a higher levy, and so on as they are ground, decaffeinated and so forth. Move up the value chain, and you pay. Some developing countries-in Latin America, especially Brazil, and in Africa too-are seething that a deal slipped away.
提议中还是有不少显而易见的好处，那些削减约束关税的国家必然伤及实际税率。现实中本不应该存在过高的关税增长，这个令人不悦的结果源于对制造过程各个环节的累计征税。生咖啡豆也许还是免关税的产品，但是烘培过的就会招致高额的课税，这种税收的增加会一直伴随着研磨、脱咖啡因等所有的工艺进程，各项增值都会反映到价值链条的顶端，也就是你需要支付的环节。一些拉美和非洲的发展中国家，特别是巴西正因为该现象导致的贸易流失而极为不满。

Given all this, the inability of ministers to agree, having come so close, seems unfathomable. Belief is all the more beggared when you look at the wider world. The global economy is slowing, possibly horribly: under such conditions, protectionism thrives. It would be silly to say that the sky is about to fall in: too much has been agreed in the past, and too many countries and businesses value an open trading system, to suppose that the 2010s will be a rerun of the 1930s. But trade has too few friends these days-notably in America’s Congress and the Elysée Palace. Ministers picked a poor time to fail.
由于上述背景，部长们极度接近却又无法达成一致的协议变得深不可测。面对日益狂野的世界，信念似乎成为全部可以祈求的东西。全球经济放缓，在这样的情况下贸易保护主义很有可能极度复苏。但宣扬世界崩溃还是有些杞人忧天，毕竟在过去的时间里达成了很多的共识，很多国家和行业非常重视自由贸易体系，认为2010年左右将会是上世纪30年代大萧条的回归。目前支持贸易的力量太过薄弱，最明显的是在美国国会和爱丽舍宫得不到支持。部长们这次失败发生在了最困难的时期。

The ultimate cause of failure only deepens the sense of puzzlement. When talks started, the likeliest deal-breaker seemed to be the ceiling on American farm subsidies, which is far higher than America actually spends. In the end, the deal fell over protection not for America’s farmers but for those of the developing world: a “special safeguard mechanism”, to kick in when imports surged. America wanted the trigger set high; India, joined by China, wanted it low. Both developing countries, it is said, also wanted to be able to jack tariffs up above existing ceilings, not merely those set in a Doha deal. After 60 hours of talk by Mr Lamy’s count, there was deadlock; and that was that. Meanwhile, believe it or not, food is pricier than ever.
此次失败使迷茫的感觉更加深入。谈判之初，最有可能的搅局的原因似乎是美国的高额农业补贴大大超过实际支出。但最后阻碍谈判的内容并不是对美国农民的保护措施，而是发展中国家的保护措施 –用来打击进口骤增的”特别保护机制”。美国希望设置较高的触发点，而印度、中国则希望较低。这两个发展中国家都希望将关税提高到超过目前最高限额的程度，而不是与多哈协议持平的水平。根据Lamy的计算，谈判经过60个小时后进入了僵局，事情就已经是那样了。与此同时，无论你相信与否，食品价格比以往任何时候都更加高昂。

India’s mountain, America’s molehill
印度面前的天堑在美国眼里只不过是小径一条

You could call this “a collective failure”, as some ministers did. You could also be more specific. India’s willingness to open its economy in reality is in lamentable contrast to its inability to commit itself at the WTO. Its stubbornness is explained by the ferocity of India’s politics on this subject and the desperate, even suicidal, poverty of many of its farmers. But it and China must have known that they were asking too much.
你可以象某些部长那样称此次会谈为”集体失败”；你也可以表达得更加明确。印度开放经济的意愿与其无法兑现向世贸组织所承诺的现实相比是非常可悲的。在这个主题上印度用野蛮的政治和其农民极端、甚至是毁灭性的贫穷境况表达了他的倔强。但是印度和中国必须清楚地意识到他们提的要求已经太多了。

America has some answering to do, too. It seems to have misread the big story: in the WTO, rich countries no longer call the shots, as they did in its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. China and India, infuriating though they may be, are as powerful as America and the EU. The United States also fumbled with the details. It might have tied up a deal on cotton, and left the Chinese and Indians isolated on safeguards. And the ultimate stumbling-block, though a mountain to India, was surely a molehill to a country of America’s wealth. America has 1m farmers, India over 200m.
美国同样也有一些责任，他在重大事件的解读上出现了偏差：与关贸总协定时期有着明显的不同，发达国家在世贸组织中已经不再起操纵作用。也许有些令人愤怒，但是中国和印度的实力已经可以媲美欧盟和美国。在一些细节问题上美国也犯下了大错，他应该在棉花问题上签订协议，将印度和中国隔离于保护措施以外。这个终极阻碍对印度而言是不可逾越的天堑，而对美国的财富来说只是一条小沟；美国有100万农民，而印度却有2亿。

In the WTO, there is a saying: nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. But all the effort of nine days-or seven years-should not be lost. Mr Lamy should publish what has been agreed so far. Ideally, the ministers would then meditate over the summer on what they have lost-and he could then ask for a final push. That, alas, seems a vain hope. With American elections looming, India heading for the polls by next May and a new European Commission due late next year, it may be 2010 before much can be done. There is a risk that by then, as Peter Mandelson, the EU’s trade commissioner, once put it, “the caravans [will] have moved on in different directions”. The world will have to wait for a Doha deal, if it ever gets one. After coming so close, it should not have had to.
在世贸组织内有一句名言：所有的问题达成一致以前意味着什么都没有达成。但是过去九年，或者七年的努力不应该白白的浪费掉。Lamy先生应该将目前已经达成一致的话题公布于众，然后这些部长们应该用夏天的时间来思考一下他们失误的地方，为最后的努力推动做好准备；但是这个希望时突然的。随着美国大选结果的接近，印度也会在明年5月迎来新一次的选举，本届欧洲委员会的任期也会在明年底结束；2010年以前似乎很难有更多的进展。这样一来就有一些风险，正如欧盟外贸专员Peter Mandelson曾经说过的”商队的大篷车会向着不同的方向前行”。只要能够达成，全世界都将期待着多哈协议；但是如果可以如此的接近达成，是否真的签署就显得不是那么必要了。

译者：tidehunter     http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13110&extra=page%3D1