My local bookstore has been taking advantage of me for years. I have run a trade deficit, giving it money with nothing but books in return. At the same time I have been taking advantage of my employer, running a trade surplus with it as it gives me a salary with nothing but educational services in exchange.

多年来，本地书店一直在占我的便宜。我一直处于贸易逆差状态，我给它钱，却只换回了书。与此同时，我一直在占我雇主的便宜，与雇主保持着贸易顺差，因为雇主给我工资，却只换回了教育服务。

Thinking that way about the kinds of exchanges we all engage in is obviously absurd. But that’s precisely the reasoning behind the “reciprocal tariffs” President Trump is expected to announce this week. The details have not yet come into view, but if he does follow through, it’s clear the plan would add to what are already the nation’s highest tariffs since the 1940s. Their effect will be lower economic growth, higher inflation, higher unemployment, the destruction of wealth and a tax increase on American families. It will deal a blow to the rules underlying the global trading system and further empower China.

用这种方式来看待我们所做的各种交换显然是荒谬的。但这正是特朗普总统预计将于本周宣布的“对等关税”的依据。虽然细节尚未公布，但如果他真的贯彻执行，很明显，该计划将使本已达到美国自上世纪40年代以来最高水平的关税进一步增加。其后果将是经济增长放缓、通货膨胀加剧、失业率上升、财富缩水以及美国家庭的税收增加。它将对全球贸易体系的基础规则造成打击，并进一步增强中国的实力。

Mr. Trump has cycled through numerous rationales for tariffs: They will raise revenues, with foreigners footing the bill. They will help American manufacturers and national security. They will provide leverage against Mexican fentanyl and Canadian sovereignty. In all of these cases there is a bit of truth and a lot of falsehood.

特朗普反复提出了许多征收关税的理由：它们将增加收入，由外国人买单。它们有助于美国的制造商和国家安全。它们将为对抗墨西哥芬太尼和加拿大主权提供筹码。所有这些理由都有一些真实的成分，以及大量虚假的成分。

But the one argument Mr. Trump has returned to again and again is that other countries are taking advantage of the United States. He measures the degree to which they are doing so by the magnitude of our trade deficit with them — that is, how much more money we spend on another country’s goods and services than we get from selling it our goods and services.

但特朗普一再重申的一个论点是，其他国家正在占美国的便宜。他通过我们与其他国家的贸易逆差来衡量这些国家占美国便宜的程度——也就是说，我们花在另一个国家的商品和服务上的钱比我们卖给它的商品和服务的钱多多少。

In this reckoning, the reason those deficits arise is that other countries erect tariffs and other trade barriers against the United States. It follows from this analysis that the solution is to reciprocate by erecting our own tariffs, which will either protect the United States or else get other countries to lower their barriers, either way reducing or eliminating the trade deficits.

根据这一计算，产生这些赤字的原因是其他国家对美国设立了关税和其他贸易壁垒。从这一分析中可以得出，解决方案是通过建立我们自己的关税来回击，这要么保护了美国，要么能让其他国家降低壁垒，无论哪种方式都可以减少或消除贸易逆差。

Every step in this chain of reasoning is wrong.

这个推理过程中的每一步都是错的。

Start with the fact that imports are good, not bad. They offer consumers greater variety, such as avocados from Mexico, lower prices on cars from South Korea or greater quality, including Champagne from France. American companies are able to offer better products at lower prices and be globally competitive because they use imported steel, auto parts and precision machinery. Moreover, importing these items frees us up to devote more of our production and employment to higher productivity and higher-wage jobs, including in export industries such as aerospace and software design.

首先，进口是好事不是坏事。它们为消费者提供了更丰富的选择（墨西哥牛油果）、更低的价格（韩国汽车），或者更高的质量（法国香槟）。美国公司得以更低的价格提供更好的产品，并具有全球竞争力，因为它们使用进口钢材、汽车零部件和精密机械。此外，进口这些产品使我们能够将更多的生产和就业投入到更高生产率和更高工资的工作中，包括航空航天和软件设计等出口行业。

Running bilateral trade deficits is generally not an indication of a problem or an abuse. In recent years the United States exported more to Brazil than it imported, a fact that had more to do with Brazil’s appetite for American oil and airplanes than any trade barriers. In fact, Brazil levies an average tariff of 6 percent on goods coming from the United States, well in excess of the 1 percent levied by the United States on imports from Brazil. Same in reverse for the United States and France: We import more than we export despite having a higher tariff on their goods than they do on ours.

双边贸易逆差通常并不表明存在问题或不当行为。近年来，美国对巴西的出口大于进口，这一事实更多地是与巴西对美国石油和飞机的需求有关，而不是任何贸易壁垒。事实上，巴西对来自美国的商品征收6%的平均关税，远高于美国对从巴西进口的商品征收的1%的关税。美国和法国的情况也一样：尽管对他们的商品征收的关税比他们对我们的商品征收的关税高，但我们的进口多于出口。

In fact, there is generally no correlation between a country’s tariff levels and its overall trade balance. A particularly clear example is the 27 countries in the European Union, which have identical tariffs and other trade policies but range from trade deficits to trade surpluses.

事实上，一个国家的关税水平与其总体贸易平衡之间通常没有相关性。一个特别明显的例子是欧盟的27个国家，它们有相同的关税和其他贸易政策，但贸易逆差和贸易顺差各不相同。

So if tariffs don’t create trade deficits, what does? The answer has to do with whether a country saves its money or invests it, in things like factories, infrastructure and research. The United States invests more than it saves, which has helped fuel our enviable productivity and growth. To fill the gap, we attract money from overseas. Foreign investors exchange their euros, yen and yuan for dollars to invest in the United States. We can then use those euros, yen and yuan to buy more of what we want from Europe, Japan and China than we sell them. Voilà, a deficit.

那么，如果关税不会造成贸易逆差，那什么会呢？答案与一个国家是把钱存起来还是投资在工厂、基础设施和研究等方面有关。美国的投资大于储蓄，这有助于推动我们令人羡慕的生产力和增长。为了填补缺口，我们从海外吸引资金。外国投资者将欧元、日元和人民币兑换成美元，在美国投资。然后，我们可以用这些欧元、日元和人民币从欧洲、日本和中国购买更多我们想要的东西，而不是卖给他们。这就是逆差。

What then will these reciprocal tariffs do? They will lessen the overall volume of trade. The United States will import less because foreign goods and services will become more expensive. It will also export less, because the tariffs that other countries erect against us will make our stuff more expensive for them.

那么这些对等关税会带来什么后果呢？它们会减少贸易总量。美国将减少进口，因为外国商品和服务将变得更加昂贵。美国的出口也会减少，因为其他国家对我们征收的关税将使我们的产品对他们来说更加昂贵。

Even if other countries don’t retaliate against our tariffs with a slew of their own, the situation is still bad. Take automobile tariffs on Mexico. They would cause Americans to buy fewer cars from that country, so we would need fewer pesos, the things with which you buy their cars. As demand for Mexican currency goes down, so does its value relative to the dollar. But a strong dollar makes it more expensive for foreign countries to buy our exports. Either way, less trade, which would be bad for both consumers and workers. (As an aside, if the tariffs do succeed in meaningfully lowering trade deficits it would most likely be because they caused a recession, bringing down the amount U.S. consumers buy or businesses invest.)

即使其他国家不对我们的关税采取报复措施，情况仍然很糟糕。以墨西哥的汽车关税为例。它们会导致美国人减少从那个国家购买汽车，因此我们需要的比索（购买汽车的货币）也会减少。随着对墨西哥货币需求的下降，其相对于美元的价值也在下降。但是，强势美元使外国购买我们的出口产品变得更加昂贵。无论哪种情况，贸易都会减少，这对消费者和工人都不利。（顺便说一句，如果关税真的能有效地降低贸易逆差，那很可能是因为它们引发了经济衰退，降低了美国消费者的购买量或企业的投资。）

If all reciprocal tariffs are bad in theory, however, Mr. Trump’s seem likely to be even worse in practice. That’s because he’s not just looking to even things out with other countries by raising U.S. tariffs by a percentage point or two, the current difference in tariff rates between the United States and many of its trade partners. Instead, he has been cherry-picking examples of goods where other countries have higher tariffs than the United States while ignoring the many cases where the reverse is true.

如果说所有的对等关税在理论上都是不好的，那么特朗普的关税在实践中可能会更糟。这是因为他不只是希望通过将美国关税提高一两个百分点（这是目前美国与许多贸易伙伴之间的关税税率差异）来实现双方税率的均等。他是在刻意挑选其他国家的关税高于美国的商品作为例子，而忽略了许多相反的情况。

The president even claimed that foreign value-added taxes, or VATs, discriminate against American exports. It is true that these VATs apply to American goods, from oranges to cars to cosmetics. But they apply in equal measure to European oranges and cars and cosmetics. They don’t discriminate against the United States or any other country. And demanding that European countries change them would mean demanding that they alter core aspects of their tax systems. Why would they ever agree?

总统甚至声称外国的增值税是对美国出口的歧视。的确，这些增值税适用于从橙子到汽车再到化妆品的美国商品。但它们同样适用于欧洲的橙子、汽车和化妆品。它们并不歧视美国或任何其他国家。要求欧洲国家改变这些税收，就意味着要求他们改变税收制度的核心方面。他们怎么会同意呢？

The consequences of this are serious. In Mr. Trump’s first term he raised average tariffs by about 1.5 percentage points. With all of the trade measures he has already carried out this year, they have gone up another six percentage points — and reciprocal tariffs could add much more. All told, the tariff increases in the first four months of his latest trade war are likely to be five to 10 times as large as those he imposed in the four years of his first term.

这样的后果是严重的。特朗普在第一个任期内将平均关税提高了约1.5个百分点。在他今年已经实施的所有贸易措施中，关税又上升了6个百分点——而对等关税可能会增加更多。总而言之，在他最新一次贸易战的前四个月里，关税增幅可能是他第一个任期四年的五到10倍。

There’s been a lot of talk about whether that will crash the economy altogether. The enormous increase in business uncertainty that tariffs have engendered means anything could happen. Goldman Sachs, however, estimates that given this new round of tariffs, economic growth will decline by about 0.5 percentage point (largely because imported goods are only one-tenth of U.S. gross domestic product). Not a huge number on its own, though it translates to about $1,000 per household but it would push up inflation by a similar magnitude. All of this is on top of the harm done by all the tariffs that have already been announced.

有很多人在谈论这是否会使整个经济崩溃。关税造成的商业不确定性大幅增加意味着任何事情都有可能发生。但高盛估计，考虑到新一轮的关税，经济增长将下降约0.5个百分点（主要是因为进口商品仅占美国国内生产总值的十分之一）。这本身并不是一个巨大的数字，虽然可以换算成每个家庭约1000美元，但它会推高通货膨胀率。所有这一切都是在已经宣布的所有关税造成的伤害之上。

Lower-income families will pay a higher fraction of their income in tariffs, but the revenue will very likely go to tax cuts skewed to high-income households. The stock market has already lost more than $3 trillion since Mr. Trump first dialed up his tariff threats in February. The losses could grow over time as the United States increasingly distances itself from the benefits of imports, exports and global supply chains.

低收入家庭将把收入的很大一部分用于支付关税，但这些税收很可能用于向高收入家庭倾斜的减税。自特朗普今年2月首次发出关税威胁以来，股市已经损失了超过3万亿美元。随着美国越来越远离进口、出口和全球供应链的好处，这种损失可能会随着时间的推移而增加。

The geopolitical realignment this will help engender may be even more profound. The United States has leverage vis-à-vis Canada and Mexico because we are their main trade partner. But China is the largest trading partner for a majority of countries in the world. Give these countries a choice between economic relations with the United States and with China, they would probably choose the latter in a heartbeat. And where economic relations go, political relations will follow. This week’s tariffs are another step toward hurting the U.S. economy and creating a geopolitical system that increasingly has China at its center.

由此将助推的地缘政治重新调整可能产生的影响就更为深远了。美国对加拿大和墨西哥具有影响力，是因为我们是他们的主要贸易伙伴。但中国是世界上大多数国家的最大贸易伙伴。如果让这些国家在与美国的经济关系和与中国的经济关系之间做出选择，它们可能会毫不犹豫地选择后者。经济关系走到哪里，政治关系就会走到哪里。本周的关税是伤害美国经济和创建一个日益以中国为中心的地缘政治体系的又一步。