同是哈佛，立场各异

龙血树

FELDSTEIN教授支持唐菖蒲，他辅佐过从里根开始的多位前总统。

Project Syndicate

The Real Reason for Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs
March 15, 2018


By MARTIN FELDSTEIN
Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, chaired President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984. In 2006, he was appointed to President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and, in 2009, was appointed to President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Currently, he is on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Group of 30, a non-profit, international body that seeks greater understanding of global economic issues.


The Trump administration's proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will target China, but not the way most observers believe. For the US, the most important bilateral trade issue has nothing to do with the Chinese authorities' failure to reduce excess steel capacity, as promised, and stop subsidizing exports.

CAMBRIDGE — Like almost all economists and most policy analysts, I prefer low trade tariffs or no tariffs at all. How, then, can US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose substantial tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum be justified?

Trump no doubt sees potential political gains in steel- and aluminum-producing districts and in increasing the pressure on Canada and Mexico as his administration renegotiates the North American Free Trade Agreement. The European Union has announced plans to retaliate against US exports, but in the end the EU may negotiate – and agree to reduce current tariffs on US products that exceed US tariffs on European products.

But the real target of the steel and aluminum tariffs is China. The Chinese government has promised for years to reduce excess steel capacity, thereby cutting the surplus output that is sold to the United States at subsidized prices. Chinese policymakers have postponed doing so as a result of domestic pressure to protect China’s own steel and aluminum jobs. The US tariffs will balance those domestic pressures and increase the likelihood that China will accelerate the reduction in subsidized excess capacity.

Because the tariffs are being levied under a provision of US trade law that applies to national security, rather than dumping or import surges, it will be possible to exempt imports from military allies in NATO, as well as Japan and South Korea, focusing the tariffs on China and avoiding the risk of a broader trade war. The administration has not yet said that it will focus the tariffs in this way; but, given that they are being introduced with a phase-in period, during which trade partners may seek exemptions, such targeting seems to be the likeliest scenario.

For the US, the most important trade issue with China concerns technology transfers, not Chinese exports of subsidized steel and aluminum. Although such subsidies hurt US producers of steel and aluminum, the resulting low prices also help US firms that use steel and aluminum, as well as US consumers that buy those products. But China unambiguously hurts US interests when it steals technology developed by US firms.

Until a few years ago, the Chinese government was using the Peoples Liberation Army’s (PLA) sophisticated cyber skills to infiltrate American companies and steal technology. Chinese officials denied all wrongdoing until President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping met in California in June 2013. Obama showed Xi detailed proof that the US had obtained through its own cyber espionage. Xi then agreed that the Chinese government would no longer use the PLA or other government agencies to steal US technology. Although it is difficult to know with certainty, it appears that such cyber theft has been reduced dramatically.

The current technology theft takes a different form. American firms that want to do business in China are often required to transfer their technology to Chinese firms as a condition of market entry. These firms “voluntarily” transfer production knowhow because they want access to a market of 1.3 billion people and an economy as large as that of the US.

These firms complain that the requirement of technology transfer is a form of extortion. Moreover, they worry that the Chinese government often delays their market access long enough for domestic firms to use their newly acquired technology to gain market share.

The US cannot use traditional remedies for trade disputes or World Trade Organization procedures to stop China’s behavior. Nor can the US threaten to take Chinese technology or require Chinese firms to transfer it to American firms, because the Chinese do not have the kind of leading-edge technology that US firms have.

So, what can US policymakers do to help level the playing field?

This brings us back to the proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. In my view, US negotiators will use the threat of imposing the tariffs on Chinese producers as a way to persuade China’s government to abandon the policy of “voluntary” technology transfers. If that happens, and US firms can do business in China without being compelled to pay such a steep competitive price, the threat of tariffs will have been a very successful tool of trade policy.

龙血树

伯克利教授J. Bradford DeLong驳斥了他：

J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was Deputy Assistant US Treasury Secretary during the Clinton Administration, where he was heavily involved in budget and trade negotiations. His role in designing the bailout of Mexico during the 1994 peso crisis placed him at the forefront of Latin America’s transformation into a region of open economies, and cemented his stature as a leading voice in economic-policy debates.

“ This makes no sense at all. There is nothing in the formal or informal record suggesting that any of the potential deciders and influencers inside the Trump Administration support the steel and aluminum tariffs as some kind of Xanatos Gambit to persuade China to adopt intellectual property rules more to the liking of U.S. firms doing business in China. Absolutely nothing。”

龙血树

来自哈佛的另一位教授Dani Rodrik 观点相反：

The Double Standard Of America’s China Trade Policy
by Dani Rodrik on 16 May 2018

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the- ... -china-trade-policy

Dani Rodrik is Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, and, most recently, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy.

A high-profile United States trade delegation appears to have returned empty-handed from its mission in China. The result is hardly a surprise, given the scale and one-sided nature of the US demands. The Americans pushed for a wholesale remaking of China’s industrial policies and intellectual property rules, while asking China’s government to refrain from any action against Trump’s proposed unilateral tariffs against Chinese exports.

This is not the first trade spat with China, and it will not be the last. The global trading order of the last generation – since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 – has been predicated on the assumption that regulatory regimes around the world would converge. China, in particular, would become more “Western” in the way that it manages its economy. Instead, the continued divergence of economic systems has been a fertile source of trade friction.

There are good reasons for China – and other economies – to resist the pressure to conform to a mold imposed on them by US export lobbies. After all, China’s phenomenal globalization success is due as much to the regime’s unorthodox and creative industrial policies as it is to economic liberalization. Selective protection, credit subsidies, state-owned enterprises, domestic-content rules, and technology-transfer requirements have all played a role in making China the manufacturing powerhouse that it is. China’s current strategy, the “Made in China 2025” initiative, aims to build on these achievements to catapult the country to advanced-economy status.

The fact that many of China’s policies violate WTO rules is plain enough. But those who derisively call China a “trade cheat” should ponder whether China would have been able to diversify its economy and grow as rapidly if it had become a member of the WTO before 2001, or if it had slavishly applied WTO rules since then. The irony is that many of these same commentators do not hesitate to point to China as the poster boy of globalization’s upside – conveniently forgetting on those occasions the degree to which China has flouted the global economy’s contemporary rules.

China plays the globalization game by what we might call Bretton Woods rules, after the much more permissive regime that governed the world economy in the early postwar period. As a Chinese official once explained to me, the strategy is to open the window but place a screen on it. They get the fresh air (foreign investment and technology) while keeping out the harmful elements (volatile capital flows and disruptive imports).

In fact, China’s practices are not much different from what all advanced countries have done historically when they were catching up with others. One of the main US complaints against China is that the Chinese systematically violate intellectual property rights in order to steal technological secrets. But in the nineteenth century, the US was in the same position in relation to the technological leader of the time, Britain, as China is today vis-à-vis the US. And the US had as much regard for British industrialists’ trade secrets as China has today for American intellectual property rights.

The fledgling textile mills of New England were desperate for technology and did their best to steal British designs and smuggle in skilled British craftsmen. The US did have patent laws, but they protected only US citizens. As one historian of US business has put it, the Americans “were pirates, too.”

Any sensible international trade regime must start from the recognition that it is neither feasible nor desirable to restrict the policy space countries have to design their own economic and social models. Levels of development, values, and historical trajectories differ too much for countries to be shoehorned into a specific model of capitalism. Sometimes domestic policies will backfire and keep foreign investors out and the domestic economy impoverished. At other times, they will propel economic transformation and poverty reduction, as they have done on a massive scale in China, generating gains not just for the home economy but also for consumers worldwide.

International trade rules, which are the result of painstaking negotiations among diverse interests – including, most notably, corporations and their lobbies, cannot be expected to discriminate reliably between these two sets of circumstances. Countries pursuing harmful policies that blunt their development prospects are doing the greatest damage to themselves. When domestic strategies go wrong, other countries may be hurt; but it is the home economy that pays the steepest price – which is incentive enough for governments not to pursue the wrong kind of policies. Governments that worry about the transfer of critical technological know-how to foreigners are, in turn, free to enact rules prohibiting their firms from investing abroad or restricting foreign takeovers at home.

Many liberal commentators in the US think Trump is right to go after China. Their objection is to his aggressive, unilateralist methods. Yet the fact is that Trump’s trade agenda is driven by a narrow mercantilism that privileges the interests of US corporations over other stakeholders. It shows little interest in policies that would improve global trade for all. Such policies should start from the trade regime’s Golden Rule: do not impose on other countries constraints that you would not accept if faced with their circumstances.

Republication forbidden. Copyright: Project Syndicate 2018 The Double Standard of America’s China Trade Policy

hotmen

横眉冷对千夫指,俯首甘为孺子牛.

躲进小楼成一统,关他东夏与春秋.

龙血树

hotmen 发表于 2018-8-27 10:53
横眉冷对千夫指,俯首甘为孺子牛.

躲进小楼成一统,关他东夏与春秋.

秋乏时刻，多多秋眠是王道

hotmen

龙血树 发表于 2018-8-27 18:13
秋乏时刻，多多秋眠是王道

龙教授熟悉米国的大学吗？
请教龙教授一个事：一个有点左倾的无神论华裔女孩，去波士顿学院乔治敦大学这类的教会学校是否合适？
如果把范围控制在南到弗吉尼亚，北到马萨诸塞的东海岸这个方圆里，学校最好在城镇，食宿条件好，不是女校，人际关系不紧张，又要有点挑战性，有合适的学校推荐吗？

龙血树

hotmen 发表于 2018-8-27 19:26
龙教授熟悉米国的大学吗？
请教龙教授一个事：一个有点左倾的无神论华裔女孩，去波士顿学院乔治敦大学这 ...

准备申请吗？本科还是研究生，专业？本科，假如不是工科和医科，还可以考虑文理学院，本科强烈建议私立。研究生则无所谓私立公立，主要看大学专业排名就行。

东海岸大学极多。波士顿学院乔治敦大学很好。宗教性大学无所谓，只要孩子自己比较随和不去较真。

中国左倾和美国左倾不同，所以需要界定一下。中国左倾对于中国政体比较支持，而美国左倾右倾都对中国政体不甚欣赏，当然左倾的对于多元化更加容忍。大学基本是美国左倾根据地。

hotmen

龙血树 发表于 2018-8-27 21:05
准备申请吗？本科还是研究生，专业？本科，假如不是工科和医科，还可以考虑文理学院，本科强烈建议私立。 ...

谢谢建议。
本科。专业未定，可能也不急着定，不急着安生立命的。
文理学院也考虑，但威廉姆思这种在山里的也不行。
州立的费用低些。
左倾，支持桑德斯的那种，跟中国没有关系。

龙血树

hotmen 发表于 2018-8-27 22:13
谢谢建议。
本科。专业未定，可能也不急着定，不急着安生立命的。
文理学院也考虑，但威廉姆思这种在山里 ...

孩子是从中国申请吗？从中国的话，我倾向于推荐文理学院，因为对于本科生的关怀相当多，适合transition。中等以上的文理学院毕业生，想进一步学习的，基本都能够被名校接受。

私校对于美国人可能学费比公立高很多，但是对于中国人，因为不能够享受美国的州立大学的补贴，所支付的公立私立学费差异很小，而教学质量差异巨大。

宗教性可能不如兄弟会、姐妹会更值得关注。美国有的学校的社交主要依赖于兄弟会、姐妹会。因为具有一定私密性，对此有人喜欢，有人不喜欢。

桑德斯也不是需要考虑的问题，差不多所有大学，除了军校，学生们都非常支持他。

建议去这个英文网站，里面几乎有每一个学校的多维度的信息，差不多应有尽有： http://www.studentsreview.com

藤校就不讲了。 宾州还有卡耐基麦隆，也算进入藤校档次，在匹兹堡，宾州西部，算大中型城市。波士顿好学校极多，除了波士顿学院，哈佛，麻省理工， 还有波士顿大学，东北大学等。

北面 Rochester大学。 南边Duke。这两个都是二十多万人的城市，在美国已经算中等了。Duke的学生评价很好，但是兄弟会姐妹会盛行。
Emory在亚特兰大，大城市，学生自己评价不错。
Fordham University在纽约城北边，本身也有一百多万人口，算大城市。
Swarthmore虽然算是在小镇，但是就是费城的城郊。
Wesleyan University在大学城，但离着州府和New Haven不远，二者都是十万人以上的城市。

随便提了几个，东部学校太多了，可以用以上的网站自己慢慢挑。

hotmen

龙血树 发表于 2018-8-28 16:16
孩子是从中国申请吗？从中国的话，我倾向于推荐文理学院，因为对于本科生的关怀相当多，适合transition。 ...

谢谢建议！
是美国的小孩。提了很多限制，家长有点花眼。

以后有了粗选的大框框，再请教你。
谢谢！

龙血树

hotmen 发表于 2018-8-28 16:57
谢谢建议！
是美国的小孩。提了很多限制，家长有点花眼。

不客气。小朋友一般自己很有主张的。她家长带着各个学校参观一圈，基本她自己就会知道喜欢哪个。