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In the final days of his presidency Barack Obama opened a trade case against China that was meant as a capstone to his administration’s economic battles with Beijing.
在其总统任期的最后几天，巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)对中国提起一宗贸易诉讼，意在把该案当作他领导的行政当局对华经济战的收官之作。
The litigation brought at the World Trade Organization was nominally against illegal subsidies Beijing used to help its aluminium industry, however US officials who had spent more than year working on it saw it as something bigger. They were launching a guided missile at the financial infrastructure of China’s state-directed economy.
向世界贸易组织(WTO)提起的这一诉讼，名义上是反对北京方面为国内铝行业提供非法补贴，然而为此耗费了一年多精力的美国官员们认为该案具有更大意义。他们在向中国国有经济的金融基础设施发射一枚“导弹”。
Announcing the case, Mr Obama pointed to the low-interest state bank loans, cheap electricity and other government subsidies that China had used to fuel a “global glut” in aluminium and steel. All were illegal, he argued, and all were causing pain for China’s competitors internationally.
奥巴马在宣布提起诉讼时指出，中国低利率的国有银行贷款、廉价的电力及其他政府补贴，加剧了铝和钢铁行业的“全球产能过剩”。他称，这些补贴都是非法的，都在给中国的国际竞争对手们造成痛苦。
“We’re taking action to protect the workers — at home and around the world — who are hurt every day by these policies,” Mr Obama declared.
奥巴马宣告：“我们正在采取行动保护美国乃至全球各地的工人们，他们每天都受到这些政策的伤害。”
The move was intended to both make a statement and hand over a systemic case that Mr Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, could take up as he entered the White House promising his own economic war against China. The Obama administration went even further, seeking the help of allies in places like Brussels where officials to this day are still considering bringing a similar case.
此举一方面是要作出一个宣示，另一方面也是要移交一宗系统性的诉讼案，让奥巴马的继任者唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)接手一个现成的案子；特朗普正是借助同中国打一场经济战的承诺问鼎白宫的。奥巴马政府为了做得更加到位，还到布鲁塞尔等地寻求盟友们的帮助，欧盟官员们至今仍在考虑提起一个类似的案子。
Almost a year on, however, the aluminium case brought by the Obama administration lays dormant, just one victim of the dramatic change in US trade policy that Mr Trump has orchestrated.
然而近一年后的今天，这起由奥巴马政府提出的诉讼毫无进展，沦为特朗普导演的美国贸易政策戏剧性变化的牺牲品之一。
Armed with his instinctual suspicion of multilateral institutions, Mr Trump has turned the WTO from what his predecessors saw as a strategic tool into a strategic target. The lack of interest in the aluminium case strikes to the heart of the administration’s trade agenda: rather than trying to use the WTO and its processes to pursue US objectives, Mr Trump has expressed a clear preference for unilateral action and going around international institutions.
奥巴马将WTO当作战略工具，而在多边机构生性多疑的特朗普眼中，WTO成了战略目标。对铝业诉讼不感兴趣揭示了特朗普政府贸易议程的核心：特朗普不打算利用WTO及其程序来实现美国的目标，而是明确倾向于采取单边行动，并绕过国际机构。
“Simply put, we have not been treated fairly by the World Trade Organization,” Mr Trump told fellow Pacific Rim leaders in Vietnam last month, pointing to countries like China that for too long had been gaming the WTO system. “We can no longer tolerate these chronic trade abuses, and we will not tolerate them.”
上月在越南举行的APEC峰会上，特朗普告诉与会的环太平洋国家领导人：“简言之，我们没有得到世界贸易组织的公平对待，”他指出像中国这样的国家长期占WTO制度的便宜。“我们不能再容忍这些长期存在的贸易滥用，我们也不会再容忍这类行为。”
The result is that as trade ministers from the WTO’s 164 members gather in Buenos Aires on Sunday for their biennial conclave, they are confronting what many see as an accelerating existential crisis for both the two decades-old body and for the postwar trading system. And the US, the one-time guarantor of that architecture, is now leading the assault.
其结果是，在WTO 164个成员国的贸易部长周日在布宜诺斯艾利斯召开两年一次的会议时，他们面临着一场在很多人看来正在加速的生死攸关的危机——对已有20多年历史的WTO如此，对战后形成的贸易体系亦如此。而一度是该体系保证者的美国，正带头对其展开攻击。
Mr Trump’s charges against the WTO hinge on his belief that the creation of the institution in the 1990s helped cause the economic heartache that hit many American communities as they lost jobs to new competitors in China and elsewhere.
特朗普对WTO的攻击缘于他的这样一个信念，即上世纪90年代WTO的创立在一定程度上造成了重创美国许多社区的经济痛苦，它们的就业机会流向中国等新兴的竞争对手。
Administration officials argue the WTO has failed in its mandate to negotiate new rules for the global economy and locked the US into mismatched tariffs. Its current procedures were never designed to cope with the brand of state capitalism that China has ridden to success for three decades, they say.
特朗普政府的官员们称，WTO未能为全球经济谈判达成新的规则，并将美国锁定于不合理的关税。他们表示，WTO当前的程序根本不是为了对付中国30年来赖以成功的那种国家资本主义而设计的。
Advocates of the WTO may proclaim its dispute settlement process as a barrier to trade wars, but US officials argue the disputes take too long and end up in the hands of an appellate body that they accuse of encroaching on the sovereignty of WTO members.
WTO的倡导者或许会宣称，其争端解决过程有助于阻止贸易战，但美国官员辩称，这些争端拖得太久，而且最终落入一个被他们指责侵犯WTO成员国主权的上诉机构手中。
In a 2010 paper, written when he was a leading trade lawyer in Washington, Robert Lighthizer, Mr Trump’s trade tsar, argued that the US should thumb its nose at the WTO more often. And for all intents and purposes that is what he the Trump administration appears to be setting out to do.
特朗普手下的美国贸易代表罗伯特?莱特希泽(Robert Lighthizer)在2010年（当时他是华盛顿一位知名贸易律师）撰写的一篇论文中辩称，美国应该更加经常地对WTO嗤之以鼻。而从所有意图和目的来看，这似乎正是特朗普政府在做的事情。
“I believe that there is one challenge on the current scene that is substantially more difficult than those faced in the past, and that is China,” Mr Lighthizer told a Washington audience earlier this year, calling its efforts to force technology transfer, and to “distort” markets in China “a threat to the world trading system that is unprecedented”.
“我认为，当前有一项挑战比我们以往面对的那些挑战要困难得多，那就是中国，”莱特希泽今年早些时候在华盛顿发表演讲时表示。他指责中国强迫技术转让及“扭曲”国内市场的行为是“对世界贸易体系前所未有的威胁”。
“Unfortunately, the World Trade Organization is not equipped to deal with this problem,” he added. “We must find new ways to ensure that a market-based economy prevails.”
“遗憾的是，WTO没有能力应对这一问题，”他补充道，“我们必须找到新方式，确保以市场为基础的经济占上风。”
The Trump administration’s assault on the WTO so far has had a passive-aggressive quality.
特朗普政府对WTO的攻击迄今表现出被动攻击型的特质。
Diplomats in Geneva say that since Mr Trump’s election the US has been playing a back-seat role in most WTO negotiations. “The US has been absent for 12 months now,” says one senior trade diplomat. “They are not at all in the game.”
常驻日内瓦的外交官们表示，自特朗普当选以来，美国在多数WTO谈判中一直扮演后座角色。“美国已经缺席12个月了，”一位资深贸易外交官表示，“他们根本就不参与。”
Ahead of previous WTO gatherings, the US has played a leading role in driving the negotiating agenda. This time around officials from other countries working on possible deals, on issues like eliminating illegal fishing subsidies around the world, say they just hope the US does not block any action.
过去在召开WTO会议之前，美国在推动谈判议程方面一直发挥引领作用。而现在，致力于达成协议（比如在世界各地取缔非法捕捞补贴等问题上）的其他国家官员表示，他们只是希望美国不要阻挠任何行动。
Yet the US has also taken more direct aim at the WTO’s dispute function and started acting on its complaints about the appeals process.
然而，美国也更直接地瞄准了WTO的争端解决职能，并开始针对其对WTO上诉程序的不满采取行动。
For months now it has blocked the filling of vacancies on the WTOs seven-member appellate body for technical reasons that some officials in Geneva believe mask a more sinister agenda to bring down the WTO’s dispute system altogether and remove it as a restraint on the sort of unilateral trade action — whether in the form of tariffs or other measures — that Mr Trump would like to take.
几个月以来，美国以技术原因为由，阻止为WTO的七人上诉机构填补空缺；日内瓦的一些官员认为，这其中隐藏着一项用心更险恶的议程，那就是要搞垮WTO的争端解决机制，消除对于特朗普希望采取的那类单边贸易行动（无论是开征关税还是其他措施）的制约。
Trump administration officials argue their fight over the appellate body is built on longstanding US complaints and point to the Obama administration’s own moves to block the appointment of judges.
特朗普政府的官员辩称，围绕该上诉机构的斗争源于美国长期以来的不满，并指出奥巴马政府也有过阻止法官任命的举措。
Michael Froman, Mr Obama’s top trade official, disputes that. “Our beef with the appellate body was that certain members were way too creative in creating law. It wasn’t about blowing up the binding dispute settlement itself,” he says.
奥巴马政府时期的最高贸易官员迈克尔?弗罗曼(Michael Froman)对此不以为然。“我们对该上诉机构的不满是，某些成员在制定法律方面实在过于有创意了。那不是为了推翻有约束力的争端解决机制本身，”他说。
Officials from other countries, moreover, express frustration with the new administration in Washington, saying it has yet to make clear what it wants to see happen at the WTO.
此外，其他国家的官员表达了对美国新一届行政当局的失望，称其并未明确表示希望WTO如何转变。
“Everyone is willing to work on reforming the system. But we need to know what it is going to mean,” says Cecilia Malmstr?m, the EU trade commissioner. “If we didn’t have [the WTO’s dispute system] it would be the total Wild West. And that would not benefit the US.”
“大家都愿意致力于改革这一机制。但我们需要知道这意味着什么，”欧盟贸易专员塞西莉亚?马姆斯特罗姆(Cecilia Malmstr?m)说，“如果我们没有（WTO的争端解决机制），那么整个格局将会变成‘狂野西部’。而那对美国不会有好处。”
One of the ironies of the Trump administration’s approach is that the US is far from alone in seeing flaws in the WTO.
特朗普政府的做法的一个讽刺之处在于，并不是只有美国才看到了WTO的缺陷。
Some officials in Geneva have begun referring to the UN-ification of the WTO, pointing to the blocking role small countries and cliques can take because of its consensus-driven decision-making structure. Others now talk about the WTO as a place where only lowest-common-denominator trade deals will ever get done with harder, more ambitious discussions taking place in regional or sectoral trade agreements.
日内瓦的一些官员已经开始提及WTO的“联合国化”——因其共识驱动的决策结构，小国和小集团可以扮演挡道的角色。还有人认为，WTO已成为一个只有“最小公分母式”贸易协定才能通过的地方，而更难、更具雄心的谈判只能在地区或行业贸易协议中进行。
The bigger irony is that many countries are eager to find reasons to co-operate with the US — especially when it comes to the perceived threat from China’s economic model.
具有更大讽刺意味的是，许多国家急于寻找跟美国合作的理由——尤其是在涉及到它们眼里来自中国经济模式的威胁时。
In resisting China’s bid to be accorded market economy status in the WTO, Washington now has allies in the EU and countries such as Japan, Canada and Mexico. The label is important for Beijing both as a symbol and to help it fight off anti-dumping cases brought against its cheap exports.
如今，在抵制中国在WTO内获得市场经济地位的问题上，美国有了欧盟以及日本、加拿大和墨西哥等国家作为盟友。这个标签对中国而言很重要，它既是一种象征，也能帮助中国打赢那些针对其廉价出口产品提起的反倾销案。
When the EU and the US refused to grant its wish in 2016, Beijing launched WTO cases against both. A decision in the EU case is now expected early in 2019, with China’s lawyers having decided to prioritise that. Mr Lighthizer, meanwhile, has warned any finding in China’s favour would be “cataclysmic” for the WTO.
2016年，当欧盟和美国拒绝满足中国愿望时，中国在WTO框架内对两者提起了诉讼。对欧盟的诉讼预计将在2019年初给出裁决，这是因为中国的律师决定优先处理该案。另一方面，莱特希泽警告称，任何支持中国的裁决对WTO而言都将是“灾难性的”。
Officials from the EU and Japan are also seeking to convince the US that there are other areas where they could find common cause against China in the WTO. Among them is a US investigation into Chinese intellectual property practices and rules requiring companies to transfer key technologies.
欧盟和日本官员也在努力让美国相信，在WTO内的其他领域，它们也可以找到反对中国的共同理由。比如，美国对中国知识产权做法和要求企业转让关键技术的规则发起了一项调查。
EU officials argue European companies have the same complaints and that all would be best served by joint action at the WTO, rather than a US move to take on China unilaterally and potentially provoke a trade war.
欧盟官员辩称，欧洲企业也有同样的投诉，最符合各方利益的做法是在WTO采取联合行动，而不是由美国对中国采取单边行动，潜在触发一场贸易战。
Roberto Azevêdo, the former Brazilian diplomat who serves as the WTO’s director-general, argues that if the US or other countries embarked on such a unilateral path they would risk repeating dangerous moments in economic history.
WTO总干事、巴西前外交官罗伯特?阿泽维多(Roberto Azevêdo)辩称，如果美国或其他国家走上这样一条单边行动的道路，它们将可能重复经济史上的危险时刻。
“The multilateral trading system is stronger than it was before and, frankly, more needed than ever. And while we can certainly try to improve it, I have yet to hear any credible alternative to that particular system,” Mr Azevêdo said in a speech earlier this year. “Without it, I think we would be in a world definitely ruled by unilateral actions, which is basically a euphemism for trade wars. And I think we all would be, without exception, worse off than we are now.”
“多边贸易体系比它在以往更加强大，坦率讲，也比以往任何时候都有必要。尽管我们当然可以尝试改进它，但我还没听到过任何可信方案能替代该体系，”阿泽维多在今年早些时候的一次发言中说，“我认为，要是没有它，我们将处于一个肯定被单边行动统治的世界——这基本上是贸易战的委婉说法。我认为，各国毫无例外都将面临比目前更糟糕的境遇。”
Trump administration officials put a different spin on that. They argue that they are taking the US on a path of more efficient and hard-nosed unilateralism.
特朗普政府的官员对此给出了不同的诠释。他们辩称，他们正把美国带上一条更加高效率、更加不讲情面的单边主义道路上。
Rather than push issues like Mr Obama’s WTO aluminium case — which even if pursued aggressively would take years to litigate — the Trump administration is employing domestic statutes that are intended to deliver results within months.
特朗普政府没有推进奥巴马的WTO铝补贴案——即便全力投入，诉讼程序也将花好多年——而是动用了国内法律，以便在几个月就能见到效果。
The Commerce Department in the spring launched national security investigations into imports of aluminium and steel that could yield a decision on tariffs in the weeks to come. Last month it “self-initiated” an anti-dumping case against Chinese aluminium sheeting used in things such as home gutters — the first time it has done this since 1985.
今年春季，美国商务部以国家安全为由，对进口的铝和钢铁发起了调查，可能在未来几周就要不要征收关税的问题作出裁决。上月，商务部“自主启动了”一项针对中国铝板（用于住宅排水沟等）的反倾销案——这是该部自1985年以来第一次这么做。
Some trade veterans do still see reason for hope. “I’m still optimistic long-term about the WTO. A crisis and a near-death experience could make people look at it in a new way,” says John Weekes, a former Canadian ambassador to the WTO.
有些贸易老手仍看到保持希望的理由。“从长期看，我仍对WTO感到乐观。一场危机和濒临死亡体验可能让人们以一种新角度看待它，”前加拿大驻WTO大使约翰?威克斯(John Weekes)说。
Others have started to contemplate a WTO without the US. Should the Trump administration pull out altogether, the first move by other trade powers like China and the EU would probably be to push on without Washington.
其他人开始考虑一个没有美国参加的WTO。如果特朗普政府彻底退出，中国和欧盟等其他贸易大国很可能在没有美国的情况下向前推进。
Even within the WTO there are already signs of change. While neither China nor the EU has fully replaced the US as a dominant power in the WTO’s Geneva negotiating rooms, diplomats say other countries have begun to play a more assertive role. And they argue that, long term, other WTO members would find a way forward.
即便WTO内部也已经出现了变革迹象。尽管无论中国还是欧盟都无法在WTO的日内瓦谈判室完全取代美国的主导强国地位，但外交官们表示，其他国家已开始扮演更为强势的角色。他们辩称，从长期看，WTO其他成员国将找到一条出路。
“If the US leaves that will be a colossal blow. But let us also keep in mind that the US [as a destination] right now accounts for just 14 per cent of global exports. Yes, it will be a terrible loss. But I don’t think it will be the end,” says one senior official in Geneva.
“如果美国离开，那将是一次重大打击。但我们要记住，美国（作为一个目的地）目前仅占全球出口总量的14%。没错，那将是一个可怕的损失，但我不认为那将是末日，”日内瓦的一名资深官员说。
Mr Lighthizer has also provided his own reasons for optimism, other officials say. In private discussions, they say, he has sought to reassure Mr Azevêdo and others about the US’s current intentions.
其他官员表示，就连莱特希泽也提供了让人乐观的理由。他们说，在私下讨论中，他寻求让阿泽维多和其他人对美国当前的意图放心。
“If the WTO didn’t exist, we would have to invent it,” he told them.
“如果WTO不存在，那么我们将不得不发明它，”他告诉他们。
