After two trips to China in the last four months, I’ve been trying to say this every way I know how: Folks, you just don’t understand.

在过去四个月两次访问中国后，我一直在竭尽全力变着法儿地跟人说一句话：伙计们，你们根本不明白。

Covid had terrible effects on human health and mortality, but it also had a terrible effect on our ability to understand China. American and European business executives left China in droves at the start of the pandemic. Very, very few of them ever went back afterward. They entrusted their China businesses to local managers. While they were gone, Beijing took a great leap forward in advanced manufacturing that the world missed. It has created a manufacturing engine the likes of which may never have been seen in history.

新冠疫情对人类健康和死亡率产生了可怕的影响，但也对我们了解中国的能力产生了可怕的影响。疫情暴发之初，美国和欧洲的企业高管纷纷离开中国。之后，他们很少有人再回去，而是把在华业务委托给当地经理人管理。在他们离开的这段时间里，北京在先进制造业方面实现了被世界忽视的巨大飞跃。它创造了一个历史上可能从未见过的制造引擎。

China already controls one-third of all global manufacturing (up from 6 percent in 2000), and whether you are talking about cars or robots or phones, what is coming out of China today is not just cheaper and faster. It is cheaper, faster, better and smarter — and it is all about to be dramatically supercharged by China’s headlong rush to put artificial intelligence into everything it makes.

中国已经控制了全球三分之一的制造业（2000年仅为6%），无论是汽车、机器人还是手机，如今中国的生产不只是更便宜、更快速了。是更便宜、更快速、更优质、更智能——随着中国一股脑地将人工智能应用到它制造的一切产品中去，这一切还将得到大幅提升。

This engine is the product of decades of massive government investments in education, infrastructure and research, behind walls of protection — in a society where people are ready to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. While China was building that, America’s biggest new industry was political polarization and getting its children addicted to TikTok and Instagram.

这个引擎是几十年来政府在教育、基础设施和研究方面大量投资的产物——而且是在一个人们随时准备从早上九点工作到晚上九点，每周工作六天的社会里。在中国建设这一切的同时，美国最大的新产业是政治两极分化，以及让孩子们沉迷于TikTok和Instagram。

Read my newsroom colleague Keith Bradsher’s article from China on Monday:

请看我的新闻编辑部同事柏凯斯(Keith Bradsher)周一发自中国的文章：

Recent data from China’s central bank shows that state-controlled banks lent an extra $1.9 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years. On the fringes of cities all over China, new factories are being built day and night, and existing factories are being upgraded with robots and automation. China’s investments and advances in manufacturing are producing a wave of exports that threatens to cause factory closings and layoffs not just in the United States but also around the globe. “The tsunami is coming for everyone,” said Katherine Tai, who was the United States Trade Representative for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

中国央行最近的数据显示，过去四年中，国有银行向工业借款人额外放贷1.9万亿美元。在中国各地的城市边缘，新工厂正在日以继夜地建设，已有工厂也在进行机器人和自动化升级改造。中国在制造业方面的投资和进步正在掀起一波出口浪潮，不仅在美国，而且在全球范围内都有可能导致工厂关闭和裁员。“海啸正向每个人袭来，”前总统拜登的美国贸易代表戴琪说。

That is why President Trump’s strategy is so foolish. Instead of putting tariffs on the whole world, we should be looking to line up all our industrial allies in a united front to say to China: You cannot make everything for everyone. While China is one-third of global manufacturing production, it accounts for only 13 percent of global consumption. That is not sustainable — and it is not just freaking out the U.S. and Europe but also Brazil, Indonesia, India and others; even Russia has suddenly cut back on auto imports from China.

这就是特朗普总统的战略如此愚蠢的原因。我们不应该对全世界征收关税，而应该把我们所有的工业盟友团结起来，对中国说：你不可能为所有人制造一切。虽然中国的制造业产量占全球的三分之一，但它只占全球消费的13%。这是不可持续的——这不仅让美国和欧洲感到恐慌，也让巴西、印尼、印度和其他国家感到恐慌；就连俄罗斯也突然减少了从中国的汽车进口。

Instead of making our strategy America against the whole world on tariffs, Trump should have made it all the industrial democracies, led by America, against China.

特朗普不应该制定以关税对抗全世界的战略，而应该让以美国为首的所有工业民主国家对抗中国。

The purpose would be to effectively negotiate a way forward that both compels China to redirect its energies inward — to investing in its meager social safety net and health care system and stimulating its domestic demand — while inviting China to build new factories, not in Hanoi but in Hamtramck, Mich., and to transfer its technologies and supply chains to us in 50-50 joint ventures.

这样做的目的是有效地协商出一条前进的道路，既能迫使中国将其精力转向国内——投资其薄弱的社会保障网络和医疗体系，刺激其国内需求——又能邀请中国在密歇根州哈姆特拉克而不是河内建造新工厂，并将其技术和供应链以双方各占50%的合资方式转让给我们。

Unfortunately, our president and vice president were so busy flexing their muscles in Greenland, firing our top generals for not being sufficiently slavish to our Dear Leader and insulting our European allies for being too woke that they have squandered the leverage we needed to deal effectively with this formidable Chinese engine.

不幸的是，我们的总统和副总统正忙着在格陵兰岛秀肌肉；因为我们的高级将领对亲爱的领袖不够唯唯诺诺而解雇他们；因我们的欧洲盟友太过“觉醒”而侮辱他们，就这样，总统和副总统浪费了有效对付强大的中国引擎所需要的杠杆。

But here is what America’s business leaders really don’t understand: Trump and JD Vance have freaked out China and the E.U. by their erratic behavior. When they see a U.S. president just ignore a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada — U.S.M.C.A. — that he himself negotiated, they ask themselves: How can we trust any deal we cut with him? This could drive China and the E.U. closer together.

但美国商界领袖真正不明白的是：特朗普和JD·万斯的乖张举动已经吓坏了中国和欧盟。当他们看到一位美国总统无视他亲自谈判达成的美墨加贸易协定时，他们会问自己：我们怎么能相信我们与他达成的任何协议？这可能会让中国和欧盟走得更近。

I hear my fellow Americans say: We just have to get to the midterms and have the Democrats regain the House, and we will be OK. Sorry, folks, we cannot wait that long. Another 20 months or so of this erratic leadership, and our country will be irredeemably broken. We need a handful of Republicans in the House and the Senate — right now — to cross the aisle and put a stop to this devastating man-made economic disaster.

我听到我的美国同胞们说：只要等到中期选举，让民主党人重新获得众议院的控制权，我们就会没事的。抱歉，各位，我们等不了那么久。这种不稳定的领导再持续20个月左右，我们的国家将无可挽回地分崩离析。我们需要众议院和参议院能有几个共和党人站出来，走到对面去——现在就行动，制止这场毁灭性的人为经济灾难。