中美走向“巨大”分裂，世界经济陷入危机
[中美创新时报2025 年 4 月 11 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）令人眼花缭乱的关税升级破坏了美国和中国之间数十年来建立的贸易关系，危及两个超级大国的命运，并有可能拖累世界经济。《纽约时报》记者若林大辅亚历山德拉·史蒂文森帕特里夏·科恩和基思·布拉德舍尔对此作了下述报道。
两国展现的边缘政策已经远远超过了唐纳德·特朗普总统第一任期内的战事。2018年和2019年，特朗普在14个月内提高了对华关税。而最新的升级几乎在几天之内就完成了，关税幅度远超预期，且涵盖的商品范围也更加广泛。
周三，特朗普对中国决定征收 50% 的关税（这是对北京针对美国早先关税采取的反制措施的惩罚）采取了相应的反制措施，并加征关税，将中国进口产品的税率提高到至少 145%。
尽管特朗普强硬施压，中国仍拒绝让步。中国已将对美国进口商品的关税提高至84%。周四，中国再次承诺“战斗到底”，这一立场与中国最高领导人习近平寻求重新定义全球秩序的方针一致——一个以北京而非华盛顿为中心的全球秩序。
“我们正面临一场史无前例的列车相撞事故，”纽约亚洲协会美中关系中心亚瑟·罗斯主任奥维尔·谢尔说道。他还补充道，“过去几十年来我们精心编织的纽带正在崩塌。”
危在旦夕的是塑造了21世纪全球经济的中美关系。多年来，双方都从中受益。美国公司大量使用中国工厂，不仅抑制了美国消费者的价格上涨，还增加了中国大型企业的利润。中国获得了就业和投资，使数百万中国家庭摆脱了贫困。随着中国消费能力的增长，它为美国品牌打开了一个巨大且利润丰厚的市场。
随着中国崛起为全球强国，这一安排受到了考验，美国也越来越担心自己在获取先进技术和制造业关键零部件和材料方面容易受到中国的压力。
目前尚不清楚谁会先退缩，也不清楚双方能否找到共识。但有一件事是肯定的：中美之间数十亿美元的商品流通以及经常途经其他国家的贸易即将中断，这将对两国经济及其贸易伙伴造成毁灭性打击。
“你无法模拟这种情况，”地缘政治咨询公司APAC Advisors首席执行官史蒂文·奥肯（Steven Okun）表示。“各国是否必须在美国和中国之间做出选择？”
经济学家预测，这种差距可能导致美国经济陷入衰退。与此同时，中国经济正面临与其最大贸易伙伴（每年从美国购买价值超过4000亿美元的商品）痛苦分离的前景，因为中国正遭受房地产市场崩盘和消费者信心低迷的冲击。
由于美国和中国是全球经济的核心，其影响将波及全球。特朗普还对大多数美国贸易伙伴征收了10%的基本关税，并对外国制造的汽车和进口钢铁和铝征收关税——这些贸易障碍在最近几天的关税风暴中几乎被遗忘了。
特朗普在其第一任期内改变全球贸易规则，令北京措手不及。北京对美国进口产品征收的关税与美国关税相当。但由于中国从美国购买的商品数量很少，北京很快就没有美国商品可供惩罚了。两国于2020年1月达成停战协议，但北京认为该协议对中方不利。
在去年的竞选活动中，特朗普似乎愿意走得更远。他曾表示要对中国进口产品征收60%的关税。大多数经济学家和投资者认为，特朗普的这番讲话过于夸张——在经济现实面前，竞选承诺被削弱了。
但它给了中国充分的警告，促使其制定反制措施，对美国造成最大程度的经济打击。迄今为止，北京方面对特朗普的回应是高额关税，并威胁称其可能切断关键矿产的供应。
冲突导致两国进一步疏远的可能性比以往任何时候都大。
欧亚集团中国团队主管王丹表示，一些中国企业已经将目光投向美国以外的市场。例如，中国计划今年出口600万辆电动汽车，但几乎没有一辆出口到美国。她表示，虽然全球经济衰退的可能性存在，但美国的风险更大。
三个月前，国际货币基金组织对未来一年的经济做出了预测：美国经济状况比几乎所有其他国家都要好。
如今，许多预测人士认为美国经济可能陷入衰退。在特朗普对几乎所有国家征收高额关税后，分析人士预测美国通胀将上升，失业率将上升，经济增长将放缓。
在特朗普改变对部分非中国产品征收关税的政策之前，高频经济公司首席经济学家卡尔·温伯格表示：“我认为经济衰退已经开始，第二季度经济将显著恶化。”
关税的影响将波及整个美国经济。康奈尔大学应用经济学与政策助理教授张文东表示，美国73%的智能手机、78%的笔记本电脑、87%的电子游戏机和77%的玩具都来自中国。
中国仍在努力摆脱已波及整个经济的房地产危机。地方政府难以筹集足够的资金来支付福利项目，而金融机构则债台高筑。失业率居高不下，年轻人难以找到有前途的工作。
周四，高盛下调了对中国经济的预期，尽管该公司预计北京将推出大规模刺激措施。高盛将今年的增长预期从4.5%下调至4%。以美国的标准来看，这是一个高增长，但对中国来说，增长速度却较为缓慢。
中国一直依赖国内工厂的大量产品来抵消其他经济领域的疲软。但美国的关税将削弱需求，而中国其他贸易伙伴本已对中国商品的大量涌入心存疑虑，可能不愿填补这一缺口。
对于中美两国的小企业来说，贸易伙伴关系的突然破裂是毁灭性的。这对约翰·K·托马斯（John K. Thomas）来说是一个生存威胁，他的加州公司生产动物电子体温计，依赖于购买中国制造的电子元件，并将成品卖给中国的奶牛场。
托马斯在谈到他的公司 GLA Agricultural Electronics 时表示：“中国成为我们的第二大客户群对于我们过去 15 年的业务持续发展至关重要。”GLA Agricultural Electronics 成立于 1969 年。
过去三天，随着两国关系不断升温，托马斯的日子就像坐过山车一样。周日，他加紧努力，赶在新一轮针对美国商品的34%关税生效前，将货物运往中国最大的客户。
特朗普宣布加征关税后，这位中国客户要求增加进口量，期待北京方面做出回应。托马斯忙着采购更多产品，但中国抢先一步，宣布已将关税税率再次提高至84%，这实际上暂时断送了这位客户。
“我们几乎被挤出了中国市场，”他说。“84%的市场份额，我们完全被拒之门外了。”
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：特朗普总统。ERIC LEE/NYT
附原英文报道：
US and China headed for ‘monumental’ split, putting world economy on edge
By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Alexandra Stevenson, Patricia Cohen and Keith Bradsher New York Times,Updated April 11, 2025
President Trump.ERIC LEE/NYT
A dizzying escalation of tariffs has unraveled a trade relationship between the United States and China forged over decades, jeopardizing the fate of two superpowers and threatening to drag down the world economy.
The brinkmanship displayed by the two countries has already far exceeded the battles they waged during President Donald Trump’s first term. In 2018 and 2019, Trump raised tariffs on China over 14 months. The latest escalation has played out mostly over a matter of days, with levies that are far greater and apply to broader swath of goods.
On Wednesday, Trump countered China’s decision to match his 50% levy — a penalty for Beijing’s countermeasure to an earlier U.S. tariff — with an additional duty, raising the rate on Chinese imports to at least 145%.
As hard as Trump has pushed, China has refused to back down. China has elevated its tariffs on goods imported from the U.S. to 84%. It pledged again Thursday to “fight to the end,” an approach that is consistent with how Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has sought to redefine the global order — one with Beijing, not Washington, at the center.
“We are approaching a monumental train wreck breakup,” said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He added, “The fabric that we so carefully had woven together over the last several decades is ripping apart.”
At risk is a relationship that shaped the global economy in the 21st century. For years, both sides benefited. American companies’ extensive use of China’s factories kept prices in check for American consumers and padded the profits of the country’s biggest companies. China got jobs and investment that lifted millions of Chinese families out of poverty. And as China’s spending power grew, it opened up a giant and lucrative market for American brands.
That arrangement has been tested by China’s emergence as a global power, and a growing U.S. concern that it had become vulnerable to pressure by China over access to components and materials crucial to advanced technology and manufacturing.
It is not clear who will blink first, or if the two sides can find common ground. One thing is certain: The looming disruption to the flow of billions of dollars’ worth of goods between China and the United States, as well as the trade that often passes through other countries, will have a devastating impact on both economies and their trading partners.
“You can’t model this,” said Steven Okun, CEO of APAC Advisors, a geopolitical consulting firm. “Are countries going to have to choose between the U.S. and China?”
Workers at a garment factory making clothing for Shein in Guangzhou, China, on April 9.
Workers at a garment factory making clothing for Shein in Guangzhou, China, on April 9.QILAI SHEN/NYT
Economists are predicting that the divide could drive the U.S. economy into recession. At the same time, the Chinese economy is facing the prospect of a painful divorce from its biggest trading partner, which buys more than $400 billion worth of goods each year, as the country is reeling from a property market collapse and sluggish consumer confidence.
Since the United States and China are central to the global economy, the impact will reverberate everywhere. Trump has also imposed a base tariff of 10% on most U.S. trading partners and levies on foreign-made cars and imported steel and aluminum — impediments to trade that have been almost forgotten in the tariff whiplash of recent days.
Beijing was caught off guard by Trump’s changing the rules of global trade in his first term. It matched U.S. tariffs with its own tariffs on imports from the United States. But Beijing quickly ran out of American goods to penalize, because China bought so little from the United States. The two countries reached a truce in January 2020, an agreement that Beijing viewed as unfavorable to the Chinese side.
On the campaign trail last year, Trump seemed willing to go even further. He spoke of imposing tariffs of 60% on Chinese imports. Most economists and investors brushed off the stump speech as hyperbole — a campaign promise that gets whittled down in the face of economic realities.
But it provided China with ample warning to devise countermeasures that would inflict maximum economic pain on the United States. So far, Beijing has responded to Trump with high tariffs as well as menacing reminders that it could choke off the supply of critical minerals.
The potential for the conflict to push the two countries further apart is greater than ever.
Dan Wang, a director on Eurasia Group’s China team, said some Chinese companies were already looking beyond the United States. For example, China plans to export 6 million electric vehicles this year, almost none to the United States. She said that while there was a chance of a global recession, the risk was greater in America.
Three months ago, the International Monetary Fund offered its economic forecast for the coming year: The U.S. economy was in better shape than just about all others.
Now, many forecasters see the possibility of a U.S. recession. After Trump imposed stinging tariffs on nearly every country, analysts are predicting higher inflation, more unemployment and slower growth in the United States.
“I believe that a recession has already started and the economy is going to deteriorate remarkably in the second quarter,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said before Trump reversed himself on some of the non-China tariffs.
The effect of the tariffs will be felt across the U.S. economy. Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor of applied economics and policy at Cornell University, said 73% of smartphones, 78% of laptops, 87% of video game consoles and 77% of toys in the United States came from China.
China, for its part, is still digging out of a property crisis that has touched its entire economy. Local governments are struggling to raise enough money to pay for entitlement programs, while financial institutions are saddled with debt. Unemployment is high, and young people are struggling to find promising jobs.
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs downgraded expectations for the Chinese economy, even though it is anticipating a huge amount of stimulus spending by Beijing. It lowered its growth outlook for this year to 4%, from 4.5% — high growth by American standards but a sluggish pace for China.
China has relied on an outpouring of goods from Chinese factories to offset weakness in the rest of its economy. But the U.S. tariffs will sap demand and China’s other trading partners, already wary about a deluge of Chinese goods, might be reluctant to pick up the slack.
For small businesses in both China and the United States, the sudden rupture in the trading partnership is devastating. It presents an existential threat for John K. Thomas, whose business in California making electronic thermometers for animals depends on buying electric components made in China and selling the finished goods to Chinese dairy farms.
“For China to become my second-biggest customer base has been crucial for our business to continue in the last 15 years,” said Thomas of his company, GLA Agricultural Electronics, which was founded in 1969.
The past three days have been a roller coaster for Thomas as the two countries pushed each other to the brink. On Sunday, he raced to get units shipped to his largest customer in China before a round of 34% tariffs on American goods would take effect.
After Trump announced additional tariffs, the Chinese customer asked for more, anticipating a response from Beijing. Thomas scrambled to pull together more of the product, but China beat him to the punch and said it had raised tariff rates again to 84%, effectively ending any chance at keeping the customer for now.
“We were close to being priced out of the Chinese market,” he said. “At 84%, we are completely shut out.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
