In China, one of many nicknames for President Trump is Chuan Jianguo. It literally translates as “Trump the Nation Builder.” My best translation is “Comrade Trump.” The joke is that Mr. Trump is a patriotic son of China who is diligently advancing Chinese interests by causing chaos in the United States.

在中国，特朗普总统有很多绰号，其中之一是“川建国”，直译过来是“国家建设者特朗普”。我觉得最好翻译成“特朗普同志”。这个笑话的意思是，特朗普是中国的一个爱国的好儿子，他在美国制造混乱，努力推进中国的利益。

I learned about these memes from friends I made last summer while training as a merchant in Amazon’s official recruitment center in Hangzhou and as a Temu seller in Shenzhen. The companies are part of an enormous e-commerce ecosystem that has become central to global retailing and to the global economy. This ecosystem is deeply rooted in China and includes manufacturers of goods, sellers of goods online, and those who peddle software and services to both groups. Amazon, the millennial-cute Etsy, the bargain shopping app Temu, the fast-fashion retailer Shein and even Google and Meta — all are dependent on millions of China-based sellers.

去年夏天，我在杭州亚马逊官方招聘中心接受商家培训，在深圳作为Temu卖家接受培训，认识了一些朋友，这些流行语就是从他们那里学到的。这些公司是一个庞大的电子商务生态系统的一部分，该生态系统已经成为全球零售业和全球经济的核心，它深深扎根于中国，包括商品制造商、在线商品销售商，以及向这两个群体兜售软件和服务的人。亚马逊、千禧一代萌物网站Etsy、廉价购物应用Temu、快时尚零售商Shein，甚至谷歌和Meta——都依赖于数以百万计的中国卖家。

In 2023, Temu, purveyor of a huge range of goods, from mittens to mobile homes, became the single largest buyer of ads on Meta, The Wall Street Journal reported last year, where its parent company, PDD Holdings, is one of the largest buyers of ads on Google. (Temu disputes the amount spent.) Analysts estimated that Shein spent $200 million on Facebook and Instagram ads in just the third quarter of that year.

《华尔街日报》去年报道，2023年，从手套到移动房屋等各种商品的供应商Temu成为Meta上最大的广告买家，其母公司拼多多是谷歌上最大的广告买家之一。（Temu对其投放金额提出了异议。）分析人士估计，仅在当年第三季度，Shein就在Facebook和Instagram上投放了2亿美元做广告。

It would not be such a stretch to say that Amazon is as much a Chinese company as an American one: More than half of its top sellers are in China, and the fees these third-party sellers pay to use Amazon’s marketplace are one of its largest sources of revenue.

亚马逊既是一家美国公司，也是一家中国公司——这么说毫不为过：一半以上的顶级卖家都在中国，这些第三方卖家为使用亚马逊的市场所支付的费用是亚马逊最大的收入来源之一。

This dynamic explains why the stiff China tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump are unlikely to achieve his goal of returning manufacturing jobs to the United States. Instead, the tariffs will force Americans to pay more for the same prosaic goods they’ve always gotten from Amazon. They will also push the Chinese Amazon ecosystem to broaden its horizons and, in doing so, strengthen China’s economic power throughout the world.

这种态势解释了为什么特朗普对中国征收的高额关税不太可能实现他让制造业就业岗位回流美国的目标。相反，关税将迫使美国人为他们一直从亚马逊购买的那些普通商品支付更多的钱。它们还将推动中国的亚马逊生态系统拓宽视野，从而增强中国在全球的经济实力。

There are over 100,000 Amazon sellers in the city of Shenzhen, a bustling metropolis just north of Hong Kong where the Pearl River estuaries empty into the South China Sea. Many smaller companies sell ordinary products (plastic water bottles, rubber hoses, Christmas lights) under obscure, even bizarre, brand names. Other manufacturers are Goliaths. The Chinese electronics manufacturer Anker, founded in Shenzhen to create replacement laptop batteries but quickly realigned to make charging devices for electronics, has about 5,000 employees and $3 billion in annual revenue.

深圳是一个繁华的大都市，位于香港以北，珠江在这里流入南海。这座城市有超过10万亚马逊卖家。许多规模较小的公司出售普通产品（塑料水瓶、橡胶软管、圣诞彩灯），它们打着不知名甚至怪异的商标。还有些制造商是巨头。中国电子产品制造商安克(Anker)在深圳成立，最初生产笔记本电脑的替换电池，但很快就转型生产电子产品的充电设备。该公司有约5000名员工，年收入达30亿美元。

Amazon shoppers’ loyalty is typically not to any one seller, but to Amazon itself. Once they arrive at Amazon’s website, shoppers overwhelmingly prioritize what Amazon shows them first.

亚马逊购物者通常不是忠于某个卖家，而是亚马逊本身。一旦进入亚马逊网站，绝大多数购物者会优先考虑亚马逊展示给他们的东西。

Given this, Amazon shoppers may not notice the impact high tariffs will have on smaller sellers, which tend to lack the capital and resources to absorb such instability. Similar to what happened in the summer of 2021, when Amazon abruptly suspended tens of thousands of Chinese stores it suspected of buying fake reviews, the companies that fail will be swiftly replaced and forgotten.

考虑到这一点，亚马逊的购物者可能不会注意到高关税对小卖家的影响，小卖家往往缺乏资金和资源来消化这种不稳定性。2021年夏天就是这样的情况，当时亚马逊突然暂停了数万家涉嫌购买虚假评论的中国商店，撑不下去的公司很快被取代和遗忘。

American shoppers are more likely to notice higher prices for their goods. The vast majority of Amazon products, for instance, are made in China. Many American Amazon sellers source their products there. They, like their China-based counterparts, will eventually be forced to raise their prices because they have such low profit margins as it is.

美国消费者更容易注意到他们购买的商品价格上涨。例如，亚马逊的绝大多数产品都是在中国制造的。许多美国亚马逊卖家在中国采购产品。他们和中国同行一样，最终将被迫提高价格，因为利润率太低了。

Most economists dismiss the idea that the tariffs will help bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Some question whether America should even attempt to draw them back. The Chinese government has spent decades making massive investments in education, infrastructure and research. And while the cost of Chinese labor has gone up, it is still significantly lower than the cost of American labor. Exemptions announced over the weekend for smartphones, computers and other electronics — promptly followed by cautions that they may well be temporary — have caused more chaos and consternation.

大多数经济学家不认为关税将有助于把制造业工作岗位带回美国。一些人甚至质疑美国是否应该试图把它们拉回来。几十年来，中国政府在教育、基础设施和研究方面进行了大量投资。虽然中国的劳动力成本已经上升，但它仍然明显低于美国的劳动力成本。上周末，美国宣布的对智能手机、电脑和其他电子产品的豁免——随后又警告称，这些豁免很可能是暂时的——引发了更多的混乱和恐慌。

Over the medium to longer term, American tariffs could benefit China. There is evidence that many Chinese sellers avoid tariffs by employing third-party companies that conceal the full value of their goods or their place of origin. Goldman Sachs estimates that such practices helped Chinese businesses evade $110 billion to $130 billion in tariffs from the first Trump administration. Many American sellers who import from China say these sleights of hand put them at a disadvantage. And if the tariffs push the United States into a recession, consumers will be looking to save, a shift likely to benefit Shenzhen’s many Amazon sellers who specialize in inexpensive goods.

从中长期来看，美国的关税对中国有利。有证据表明，许多中国卖家通过雇用第三方公司隐瞒商品的全部价值或原产地来规避关税。高盛估计，这些做法帮助中国企业逃避了特朗普第一届政府征收的1100亿至1300亿美元的关税。许多从中国进口商品的美国卖家表示，这些花招使他们处于不利地位。如果关税使美国陷入衰退，消费者将寻求节省，这种转变很可能使深圳众多专营廉价商品的亚马逊卖家受益。

Plus, tariffs create a strong incentive for Chinese sellers to try to sell their goods elsewhere. For the past two years, their government has been calling on businesses to chuhai, or go global, and expand to Africa, Latin America, and Central and Southeast Asia.

此外，关税为中国卖家试图在其他地方销售商品创造了强大的动力。过去两年来，中国政府一直呼吁企业“走出去”，向非洲、拉丁美洲、中亚和东南亚扩张。

Amazon introduced a distinctive kind of globalization that made the Shenzhen ecosystem possible. And as the tariffs drive China to globalize in the rest of the world, this ecosystem, which relies on Amazon’s massive platform and data for its survival, can lead the way. There’s a reason the Chinese government partnered closely with Amazon for the past 10 years.

亚马逊引入了一种独特的全球化，使深圳的生态系统成为可能。随着关税推动中国在世界其他地区实现全球化，这个依赖亚马逊庞大平台和数据生存的生态系统可以引领潮流。中国政府在过去10年里与亚马逊密切合作是有原因的。

Chinese sellers’ global push will also most likely benefit from advances in artificial intelligence that will allow manufacturers to produce and manage more products, translate their advertising into different languages and research new overseas markets more effectively than ever before.

中国卖家的全球推广也很可能受益于人工智能的进步，它将使制造商能够生产和管理更多的产品，将广告翻译成不同的语言，并比以往更有效地研究新的海外市场。

In the past, sudden disruptions to China’s global e-commerce industry have accelerated innovation. In Shenzhen, Amazon’s 2021 mass suspension of accounts still feels like an active trauma. One businessman who told me about it when I visited last summer almost wept. But it was also a key reason that many merchants migrated to Temu as it began pouring money into expanding into the United States. Temu launched in September 2022. By the end of 2024, analysts estimated that Temu had sold over $50 billion of goods, and Apple confirmed that Temu’s app was the year’s most downloaded on iPhones in the United States; according to Similar Web, a data analytics platform, in February 2025, Temu’s U. S. website received almost one billion visits.

在过去，中国全球电子商务行业的突然中断加速了创新。在深圳，亚马逊2021年大规模封号事件至今让人心有余悸。去年夏天我去中国时，一位商人跟我说这件事时几乎哭了出来。但这也是许多商人迁移到Temu的一个关键原因，因为它开始投入大量资金向美国扩张。Temu于2022年9月启动。分析人士估计，到2024年底，Temu已经售出了超过500亿美元的商品，苹果公司证实，Temu是当年美国iPhone上下载量最高的应用程序；根据数据分析平台Similar Web的数据，2025年2月，Temu的美国网站访问量接近10亿次。

Then there’s the Trump administration’s decision to end an exemption that has long allowed e-commerce businesses to ship packages worth less than $800 into the U.S. duty-free. Although the shift will hurt online sellers like Temu that specialize in selling inexpensive goods, the company anticipated the change and had already begun encouraging merchants to send larger shipments to warehouses in the United States, rather than selling directly to customers. That is driving the growth of Chinese third-party logistics companies, often owned or operated in partnership with friends and relatives in the United States.

此外，特朗普政府决定结束长期以来允许电子商务企业将价值低于800美元的包裹免税运往美国的豁免。尽管这一转变会损害像Temu这样专门销售廉价商品的在线卖家，但该公司已经预料到了这一变化，并已经开始鼓励商家将更多的货物送到美国的仓库，而不是直接向客户销售。这推动了中国第三方物流公司的发展，这些公司通常是与在美国的亲友合伙拥有或合作经营的。

So perhaps it makes sense that so many Shenzhen merchants seem to admire Mr. Trump as a businessman, if not as a leader. Their affection, as I understand it, is complicated, as their admiration is now tempered with upset at his new tariff regime. Some tell me that the fondness for Mr. Trump is mostly a joke. But many share a sense that, however painful they may be in the short term, the tariffs will eventually spur China to assume its rightful place as the world’s leader and the beacon of a new phase of globalization that’s no longer centered on America.

因此，众多深圳商人似乎把特朗普作为一个商人来喜爱，而不是作为一个领导人，似乎也就合理了。据我所知，他们的感情是复杂的，因为他们的喜爱当中夹杂着对特朗普新关税制度的不满。有人告诉我，对特朗普的好感基本上是一个玩笑。但许多人都有一种感觉，无论关税在短期内会带来怎样的痛苦，最终都会促使中国成为世界的领导者，成为全球化新阶段的灯塔，令全球化不再以美国为中心。

On Taobao, a Chinese domestic e-commerce platform, you can buy a ceramic statue of Mr. Trump to bring good luck to your business. The original is called Xi Tian Dong Fo Tu Lan Pu: Trump, the all-knowing Buddha of the West, or Western Heaven. Now, there are knockoffs on Amazon for $45 to $50 from storefronts with names like Nagelbag and DFGHJ. With Comrade Trump at your side, or solemnly meditating on your dashboard, the future ahead is bright.

在中国国内电子商务平台淘宝上，你可以买到特朗普的瓷像，它能给你的生意带来好运。原作名为“西天懂佛特朗普”——特朗普，西方（或者西方的天国）无所不知的佛。现在，在亚马逊，有着Nagelbag和DFGHJ这样的名字的小店也有类似的山寨货在售，价格在45到50美元。有特朗普同志在你身边，或者在你的仪表盘上神情肃穆地打坐，前途一片光明。