“An educated consumer,” the New York haberdasher Sy Syms used to boast in his television commercials, “is our best customer.” The same is not true of trade pacts. Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement 20 years ago, voters have come to understand them better and like them less. True, 54 per cent of Americans see trade as an “opportunity for growth”, according to a recent Gallup poll. But 38 per cent see it as a “threat to the economy”, and they are dug in. Many blame globalisation for the 60,000 plants closed, by some estimates, and the 5m manufacturing jobs lost since Nafta was passed. The White House – negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU and the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 12 nations – finds itself failing on both fronts.
“受过教育的消费者是我们的理想客户”，纽约男子服饰经销商Sy Syms曾经在电视广告中这样标榜道。这一点对于贸易协议来说并不成立。因为20年前随着《北美自由贸易协定》(NAFTA)的通过，投票人对于贸易协议的了解程度日渐加深，好感度却越来越低。盖洛普(Gallup)近期进行的一项民调显示，54%的美国人认为贸易是一种“促进增长的机遇”，但有38%的人则认为贸易是一种“对经济的威胁”，而且他们对此深信不疑。据估计，自《北美自由贸易协定》通过以来，美国共有6万家工厂关闭，500万个制造业工作岗位消失，很多人将此归咎为全球化的影响。目前，白宫一方面在与欧盟就《跨大西洋贸易和投资伙伴关系协定》(TTIP)进行谈判，另一方面则在和12个国家商谈《跨太平洋战略经济伙伴关系协定》(TPP)。但在这两个方面，白宫取得的进展均不尽人意。
Nafta was oversold 20 years ago. It has generated much economic activity but many of its specific promises proved false. It did not stabilise the US trade balance; instead it led to sizeable trade deficits. It did not produce a Mexican prosperity widespread enough to hold down migration to the US; instead it weakened the rural Mexican economy and drove immigration higher. Other trade deals have brought unpleasant surprises, too. Since a pact with South Korea came into force in 2012, US exports there have fallen and the bilateral trade deficit is up more than 50 per cent. Barack Obama’s trade negotiators boast that their “21st century” agreements will avoid some of Nafta’s economic pitfalls. The problem is that the criticism of those agreements is 21st century as well.
《北美自由贸易协定》所能带来的益处在20年前被吹嘘过头了。它确实催生了不少经济活动，但未能兑现很多具体承诺。该协定未能稳定美国的贸易平衡，正相反，它导致了大规模的贸易逆差。该协定不仅未使墨西哥出现覆盖范围足够广的经济繁荣，以抑制墨西哥向美国的移民潮，正相反，它使墨西哥的农村经济更加虚弱，并使移民规模进一步扩大。其它贸易协议也导致了令人不快的意外后果。自从美国与韩国的贸易协定自2012年生效以来，美国对韩出口持续下降，双边贸易赤字升幅超过50%。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)的贸易谈判代表宣称，他们所推动的“二十一世纪”新型贸易协定能够避免《北美自由贸易协定》的某些经济陷阱。问题在于这些协定所面对的同样是二十一世纪的新型批评。
Today’s trade deals are more about setting standards and ground rules than about removing tariffs and quotas – which, except for food and clothing, are already quite low in the US. The new pacts get under the skin of the those who distrust global capitalism, just as the old pacts did. But they also provoke unwonted unease among market libertarians. Thus, Lori Wallach of the anti-Nafta group Public Citizen was one of the heroes of the 1999 Seattle street protests against the World Trade Organisation, but her sophisticated, left-leaning arguments against granting “fast-track” authority to today’s US trade negotiators might also convince the constitutional literalists who inhabit the various Tea Party groups.
如今的贸易协议更多是设定标准和基本原则，而非取消关税和配额——除了食品和服装之外，美国其它商品的关税水平已经很低了。新的贸易协定和过往协议一样，让那些不信任全球资本主义的人感到不快。但它们在市场自由主义者中间也激起了罕见的不安情绪。因此，洛瑞•沃勒克(Lori Wallach)作为反对《北美自由贸易协定》的“公民组织”(Public Citizen)成员，在1999年西雅图街头针对世贸组织(WTO)的抗议活动中成为了英雄。但她世故老练、反对向如今的美国贸易谈判代表授予“快速道”(fast-track)权限的左倾言论或许同样使宪法自由主义者们认定，各种各样的茶党(Tea Party)组织究竟是由什么样的人组成的。
As Ms Wallach said in a recent television appearance, the new-generation pacts are only partly about trade. The main thing such pacts do is to improve the standing of corporations against the governments that would regulate them domestically. So-called “investor-state dispute settlement”, a Nafta innovation, elevates a certain expected regulatory environment to the level of a right. Companies can sue countries before an ad hoc panel over the negative impact of laws passed in their parliaments. (Labour groups and non-governmental organisations cannot.) Under a similar set of arbitration rules the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall is seeking
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