中欧可携手维护世贸组织多边框架 | China and the EU can jointly safeguard the WTO

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作者罗斯义（John Ross）系中国人民大学重阳金融研究院高级研究员、前英国伦敦市经济与商业政策署署长。

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is by far the most important organization regulating world trade. In light of recent unfortunate unilateral imposition of tariffs outside the framework of the WTO by the US administration against a large number of countries, including the EU, China, India, Mexico, Canada and others, it is therefore important to reemphasis the role of this organization - which is crucially important for the economic development of numerous countries. 

迄今为止，世界贸易组织是管理国际贸易最重要的机构。近几个月来，美国政府奉行单边主义外交政策，对欧盟、中国、印度、墨西哥、加拿大等国出口产品征收重税。在此背景下，再次强调世贸组织的作用正当其时。

International trade, by definition, involves more than one country. Therefore it is an economic issue in which mutual agreement is absolutely vital – if one country were allowed to set the rules, it would be tempted to, or inevitably would, make these in a way which benefitted itself and not others.

国际贸易，顾名思义，包含很多国家。因此在国际贸易中，共同协议至关重要：如果规则全由一国制定，那么这些规则将倾向于或者必然维护这个国家的利益，而置其他国家的利益于不顾。

This principle of mutual agreement guided the enormously beneficial development of the international trade system which culminated in the creation of the WTO. The enormous effort necessary to create the WTO was shown in the fact that it took 46 years to bring it into existence through seven rounds of negotiations in the previous General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). With 164 members, the WTO, since the accession of Russia in 2012, includes all the world’s largest trading economies.

共同协议的原则引领着国际贸易体系的健康发展，而世贸组织就是这个体系的登峰造极之作。建立世贸组织绝非一朝一夕之功，而是经过了此前关税及贸易总协定框架下历时46年、长达七轮的艰苦谈判。2012年，俄罗斯加入世贸组织后，该组织的164个成员囊括了世界上所有重要经济体。

The crucial role of the WTO is even clearer when the vital importance of international trade to all countries' economic development is one of the most firmly established of economic principles from both a practical and a theoretical point of view. 

国际贸易逐渐成为所有国家的经济发展的经济原则之一，世贸组织的作用更加凸显。

Practically the collapse in world trade after 1929 immensely deepened the Great Depression, while the expansion of world trade after World War II, with exports plus imports rising from 24 percent of world GDP in 1960 to 56 percent in 2016, was a key pillar of world economic growth.

1929年世界贸易的衰退加剧了经济大萧条。而二战后世界贸易的扩张则成为经济增长的支柱。1960年，进出口总额占全球GDP的24%，到了2016年，这一数字上升到了56%。

In terms of economic theory, the first sentence of the founding work of modern economics, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, is: ‘The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seems to have been the effects of the division of labor.’ In a modern economy division of labor, with the creation of international supply chains, is necessarily international in scope.

亚当•斯密的《国富论》—现代经济学的奠基之作—的开篇提到，“社会生产力、人类劳动技能和思维判断力的大幅提高都是劳动分工的结果。”在现代经济劳动分工中，加上国际供应链的出现，贸易国际化是必然的。

Numerous factual studies confirm the positive correlation between the openness of an economy to trade and the speed of its economic development.

无数事实研究证明一个经济体对贸易的开放程度和其经济发展的速度成正比。

Given this crucial role of world trade for prosperity, and therefore of the WTO, it is unfortunate and damaging that the Trump administration has used a false pretext of ‘national security’ to attempt to justify executive imposition of tariffs against other countries and therefore attempts to circumvent both WTO rules and US Congressional approval. It is clear that numerous items on which the US has imposed, or has threatened to impose, tariffs have nothing to do with ‘national security’ – and it is equally false to suggest that such close US allies as Canada or Germany constitute threats to US national security.

世界贸易对繁荣昌盛来说如此重要，但特朗普政府却在以“国家安全”为幌子绕过世贸组织和美国国会向他国征收关税。很明显，白宫加税的产品和“国家安全”毫不相干。美国称其亲密盟友加拿大或者德国对其安全构成严重威胁更是无稽之谈。

Faced with such issues, it is clear that the EU and China, as respectively the world’s largest goods trading bloc and the world’s largest goods trading nation, have a vital common interest in safeguarding the WTO. 

面临美国的贸易保护主义，欧盟和中国—分别是世界上最大的货物贸易联盟和最大的货物贸易国—在维护世贸组织上拥有共同利益。

The fundamental data on world trade make this common interest clear. The US in 2017, on IMF data, accounted for only 10.6 percent of world goods trade. The Chinese mainland accounted for 11.5 percent - and with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region it accounted for 13.5 percent. The Eurozone by itself accounted for 24.5 percent of world goods trade, and the entire EU for 32.6 percent - although a large part of that, of course, was trade within the EU itself. 

来看看世界贸易的基础数据：国际货币基金组织的数据显示，2017年世界货物贸易量中，美国占比仅10.6%，中国大陆占比11.5%，若加上香港特别行政区的话总共占比13.5%，而欧元区占比24.5%，整个欧盟为32.6%，当然很大一部分来自欧盟内部的交易。

That, however, means that the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and the EU together account for 45.1 percent of world trade – compared to only 10.6 percent for the US. Furthermore, almost all the countries which account for the nearly 90 percent of world trade which is not with the US are committed to maintaining the fundamental system of the WTO.

然而，这意味着中国大陆、香港和欧盟总占比45.1%。而且，几乎所有国家—90%的贸易总量不是和美国达成的国家—都承诺维护世贸组织的基本体系。

It is therefore clear that both the EU and China are bastions of world trade and the WTO. They have a joint interest in defending the WTO.

因此，欧盟和中国是世界贸易和世贸组织的堡垒，在维护世贸组织上有共同利益。

This defense of the fundamental framework of the WTO has nothing to do with geopolitics or ‘national security’ in the genuine sense. The EU and the US will doubtless remain united militarily in NATO. But the EU, like China, has a vital economic interest in maintaining the framework of the WTO to govern world trade. It is therefore vital both for them and for the world that they use it.

维护世贸组织的基本框架和地缘政治以及所谓的“国家安全”没有任何关系。毫无疑问，欧盟和美国在北约的框架下会维持军事合作；可是欧盟，像中国一样，在维护世贸组织框架上有着切身利益，因此双方合作维护多边体制至关重要。