I have many reactions to President Trump’s largely caving on his harebrained plan to tariff the world, but overall, one reaction just keeps coming back to me: If you hire clowns, you should expect a circus. And my fellow Americans, we have hired a group of clowns.

特朗普总统在其荒唐的全球征收关税计划上基本让步了，对此我有诸多感想，但总体而言，有一种想法总是在我脑海中挥之不去：既然请了小丑来，就等着看马戏吧。我的美国同胞们，我们请来了一群小丑啊。

Think of what Trump; his chief knucklehead, Howard Lutnick (the commerce secretary); his assistant chief knucklehead, Scott Bessent (the Treasury secretary); and his deputy assistant chief knucklehead, Peter Navarro (the top trade adviser), have told us repeatedly for the past weeks: Trump won’t back off on these tariffs because — take your choice — he needs them to keep fentanyl from killing our kids, he needs them to raise revenue to pay for future tax cuts, and he needs them to pressure the world to buy more stuff from us. And he couldn’t care less what his rich pals on Wall Street say about their stock market losses.

想想特朗普、他的首席蠢材——商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克、助理首席蠢材——财政部长斯科特·贝森特，以及副助理首席蠢材——贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗，在过去几周里，他们反复告诉我们：特朗普绝不会在关税问题上让步——理由任君挑选：需要阻止芬太尼杀死我们的孩子、需要增加税收为未来的减税埋单、需要迫使世界各国多买美国货。他根本不在乎华尔街的富人朋友对股市大跌的抱怨。

After creating havoc in the markets standing on these steadfast “principles” — undoubtedly prompting many Americans to sell low out of fear — Trump reversed much of it on Wednesday, announcing a 90-day pause on certain tariffs to most countries, excluding China.

基于这些坚定不移的“原则”，特朗普给市场造成了巨大混乱——无疑导致无数美国人在恐慌中“割肉”抛售——之后，特朗普在周三突然大反转，宣布对大多数国家暂缓征收部分关税，为期90天，中国除外。

Message to the world — and to the Chinese: “I couldn’t take the heat.” If it were a book it would be called “The Art of the Squeal.”

此举向世界和中国人传达的信息是：“我顶不住压力了。”若出书的话，书名可以叫《认怂的艺术》。

But don’t think for a second that all that’s been lost is money. A whole pile of invaluable trust just went up in smoke as well. In the last few weeks, we have told our closest friends in the world — countries that stood shoulder to shoulder with us after Sept. 11, in Iraq and in Afghanistan — that none of them were any different from China or Russia. They were all going to get tariffed under the same formula — no friends-and-family discounts allowed.

但不要以为损失的只是金钱。一大堆宝贵的信任也化为乌有。过去几周里，我们告诉我们在世界上最亲密的朋友——那些在9·11事件后在伊拉克和阿富汗战争中与我们并肩作战的国家——它们与中国或俄罗斯没有任何区别。它们都将按照同样的公式被征收关税，没有任何亲友折扣。

Do you think these former close U.S. allies are ever going to trust getting into a trench with this administration again?

你觉得这些美国曾经的亲密盟友还会再次与本届政府并肩作战吗？

This was the trade equivalent of the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan, from which it never quite recovered. But at least Joe Biden got us out of a costly no-win war for which America, in my opinion, is now much better off.

拜登政府搞砸了阿富汗撤离行动，而且至今都未能完全恢复；我们眼前的这一幕就相当于它的贸易版。但至少拜登让我们摆脱了一场代价高昂且毫无胜算的战争，如今在我看来，这对美国的利远大于弊。

Trump just put us into a no-win war.

特朗普却让我们陷入了一场没有胜算的战争。

How so? We do have a trade imbalance with China that does need to be addressed. Trump is right about that. China now controls one-third of global manufacturing and has the industrial engines to pretty much make everything for everyone one day if it is allowed to. That is not good for us, for Europe or for many developing countries. It is not even good for China, given the fact that by putting so many resources into export industries it is ignoring the meager social safety net it offers its people and its even more threadbare public health care system.

为什么这么说呢？我们与中国之间确实存在贸易不平衡的问题，这确实需要解决。在这一点上，特朗普是对的。中国现在控制着全球制造业的三分之一，假以时日，如果任其发展，有一天它几乎可以为全世界所有人生产一切产品。这对我们、欧洲或许多发展中国家都没有好处。这甚至对中国来说也不是好事，因为它将如此多的资源投入到出口行业，忽视了本就薄弱的社会保障体系，并且令公共卫生体系更加捉襟见肘。

But when you have a country as big as China — 1.4 billion people — with the talent, infrastructure and savings it has, the only way to negotiate is with leverage on our side of the table. And the best way to get leverage would have been for Trump to enlist our allies in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, India, Australia and Indonesia into a united front. Make it a negotiation of the whole world versus China.

但当面对像中国这样体量的国家——有14亿人口，具备丰富的人才库以及优良的基础设施和高储蓄率，那么谈判的唯一途径就是利用我们这边的筹码。而获得筹码的最佳途径本应是特朗普联合我们在欧盟、日本、韩国、新加坡、巴西、越南、加拿大、墨西哥、印度、澳大利亚和印度尼西亚组成统一战线。让这场谈判变成全世界与中国的博弈。

Then you say to Beijing: All of us will gradually raise our tariffs on your exports over the next two years to pressure you to shift from your export economy to a more domestic-oriented one. But we will also invite you to build factories and supply chains in our countries — 50-50 joint ventures — to transfer your expertise back to us the way you compelled us to do for you. We don’t want a bifurcated world. It will be less prosperous for all and less stable.

然后你对北京说：我们所有人都将在未来两年内逐步提高对你们出口的关税，以迫使你们从外向型经济转向以国内为导向的经济。但我们也会邀请你在我们的国家建立工厂和供应链——成立各占50%股份的合资企业——就像你曾经迫使我们做的那样，把你的专业技术传授给我们。我们要的不是一个分裂的世界，这样的世界对所有人来说都不会太繁荣，也不会太稳定。

But instead of making it the whole industrial world against China, Trump made it America against the whole industrial world and China.

但特朗普没有让整个工业世界联合起来对抗中国，而是让美国与整个工业世界以及中国为敌。

Now, Beijing knows that Trump not only blinked, but he so alienated our allies, so demonstrated that his word cannot be trusted for a second, that many of them may never align with us against China in the same way. They may, instead, see China as a better, more stable long-term partner than us.

现在，北京知道特朗普不仅退缩了，他还彻底得罪了盟友，而且毫不含糊地表明他的话根本不可信，我们的许多盟友可能再也不会像以前那样与我们联合起来对抗中国了。相反，他们可能会将中国视为比我们更可靠、更稳定的长期合作伙伴。

What a pathetic, shameful performance. Happy Liberation Day.

这是多么可悲、可耻的表现。解放日快乐！