Weapons of mass disruption

大规模杀伤性武器

America is aggressively deploying a new economic arsenal to assert its power. That is counterproductive—and dangerous

美国正在积极部署新的经济武器，以彰显其实力。这定会是达不到预期的，也是危险的

词汇

Arsenal/兵工厂；军械库；武器

Counterproductive/反生产的；使达不到预期目标的

WHEN DONALD TRUMP arrived in the Oval Office he promised to restore America’s might. His method has turned out to be a wholesale weaponisation of economic tools. The world can now see the awesome force that a superpower can project when it is unconstrained by rules or allies. On May 30th the president threatened crippling tariffs on Mexico after a row over migration. Markets reeled, and a Mexican delegation rushed to Washington to sue for peace. A day later preferential trading rules for India were cancelled. Its usually macho government did not put up a fight and promised to preserve “strong ties”. China faces a ratcheting up of tariffs soon, and its tech giant, Huawei, has been severed from its American suppliers. The country’s autocratic leaders are enraged, but on June 2nd they insisted they still seek “dialogue and consultation”. A tighter embargo on Iran, imposed over European objections, is strangling its economy.

当唐纳德•特朗普(DONALD TRUMP)入主椭圆形办公室时，他承诺恢复美国的实力。事实证明，他的方法是将经济工具大规模武器化。世界现在可以看到一个超级大国在不受规则或盟友约束的情况下所能展现出的惊人力量。5月30日，总统威胁要针对墨西哥大规模移民事件，对其征收惩罚性关税。市场动荡不安，一个墨西哥代表团赶赴华盛顿要求和平。紧接着的一天后，印度的优惠贸易政策被取消。这个向来刚强的政府没有反抗，并承诺保持“牢固的关系”。（）很快将面临关税上调，其科技巨头Huawei也被切断了与美国供应商的联系。这个国家()的领导人被激怒了，但是在6月2日,他们坚持他们仍然会寻求“对话和协商”。不顾欧洲的反对，美国还对对伊朗实施了更严格的禁运，这扼杀了伊朗的经济。

词汇

Wholesale/批发的；大规模的

Weaponization/武器化；武器研制

Crippling/造成严重后果的

Tariff/关税表；收费表

Reel/蹒跚；举步为艰

Delegation/代表团；授权；委托

Preferential/优先的；选择的；特惠的

Macho/大男子气概的

sever from/割断；切下

autocratic/专制的；独裁的，专横的

embargo/禁令；禁止；封港令

President Trump must view this scene with satisfaction. Nobody takes America for granted any more. Enemies and friends know that it is prepared to unleash an economic arsenal to protect its national interest. America is deploying new tactics—poker-style brinkmanship—and new weapons that exploit its role as the nerve centre of the global economy to block the free flow of goods, data, ideas and money across borders. This pumped-up vision of a 21st-century superpower may be seductive for some. But it could spark a crisis, and it is eroding America’s most valuable asset—its legitimacy.

特朗普总统应当是满意地看到这一幕。没有人再认为美国(一枝独大)是理所当然的了。敌人和朋友都知道，()准备动用经济武器来保护国家利益。美国正在部署新的策略——扑克式的边缘政策——以及利用其作为全球经济神经中枢的角色来阻止商品、数据、思想和资金跨境自由流动的新武器。对一些人来说，这种作法对21世纪超级大国的雄心壮志可能是诱人的。但它可能引发一场危机，并正在侵蚀美国最宝贵的资产——其合法性。

词汇

Tactics/策略；战术；用兵学

Brinkmanship/边缘政策；紧急政策，外交冒险政策

Seductive/有魅力的；性感的；引人注意的

Erode/侵蚀；磨损

legitimacy./ 合法；合理；正统

You might think that America’s clout comes from its 11 aircraft-carriers, 6,500 nuclear warheads or its anchor role in the IMF. But it is also the central node in the network that underpins globalisation. This mesh of firms, ideas and standards reflects and magnifies American prowess. Though it includes goods traded through supply chains, it is mainly intangible. America controls or hosts over 50% of the world’s cross-border bandwidth, venture capital, phone-operating systems, top universities and fund-management assets. Some 88% of currency trades use greenbacks. Across the planet it is normal to use a Visa card, invoice exports in dollars, sleep beside a device with a Qualcomm chip, watch Netflix and work for a firm that BlackRock invests in.

你可能认为美国的影响力来自其11艘航空母舰、6500枚核弹头或其在国际货币基金组织中的核心角色。但它也是支撑全球化的网络的中心节点。这种由公司、理念和标准组成的网络反映并放大了美国的实力。虽然它包括通过供应链交易的商品，但主要是无形的。美国控制或拥有全球超过50%的跨境带宽、风险资本、电话操作系统、顶尖大学和基金管理资产。

大约88%的外汇交易使用美元。在全球范围内，使用Visa卡、用美元******、睡在装有高通(Qualcomm)芯片的设备旁、看Netflix，以及为贝莱德(BlackRock)投资的一家公司工作，这些都很正常。

词汇

Clout/影响力；势力

Warhead/弹头

IMF/国际货币基金组织（international monetary fund）

Underpin/巩固；支持

Magnify/放大；赞美；夸大

Greenback/美钞

Foreigners accept all this because, on balance, it makes them better off. They may not set the rules of the game, but they get access to American markets and fair treatment alongside American firms. Globalisation and technology have made the network more powerful although America’s share of world GDP has fallen, from 38% in 1969 to 24% now. China cannot yet compete, even though its economy is approaching America’s in size.

外国人接受这一切，因为总的来说，这让他们过得更好。他们可能不会制定游戏规则，但他们可以进入美国市场，与美国公司一起得到公平待遇。尽管美国在全球GDP中所占的份额从1969年的38%下降到现在的24%，但全球化和技术使网络更加强大。尽管()的经济规模正在接近美国，但她仍无法与之竞争。

 

Despite this, Mr Trump and his advisers are convinced that the world order is rigged against America, pointing to its rust-belt and its trade deficit. And rather than mimic the relatively restrained tactics of the last trade conflict, with Japan in the 1980s, they have redefined how economic nationalism works.

尽管如此，特朗普和他的顾问们相信，世界秩序受到了操纵，不利于美国，原因是美国的“锈带”和贸易逆差。他们没有效仿上世纪80年代与日本贸易冲突中相对克制的策略，而是重新定义了经济民族主义的运作方式。

词汇

Rig/操纵

rust-belt/铁锈地带（指从前工业繁盛今已衰落的发达国家一些地区）

deficit./ 赤字；不足额

mimic/模仿，摹拟

First, instead of using tariffs as a tool to extract specific economic concessions, they are being continuously deployed to create a climate of instability with America’s trading partners. The objective of the new Mexican tariffs—fewer migrants crossing the Rio Grande—has nothing to do with trade. And they breach the spirit of USMCA, a free-trade deal signed by the White House only six months ago, which will replace NAFTA (Congress has yet to ratify it). Alongside these big fights is a constant barrage of petty activity. Officials have skirmished over foreign washing machines and Canadian softwood lumber imports.

首先，关税不是用来获取特定经济让步的工具，而是不断被用来制造与美国贸易伙伴之间的不稳定气氛。新墨西哥关税的目标——减少穿越里约热内卢格兰德河的移民——与贸易无关。而且他们违反了USMCA的精神，这是白宫在六个月前签署的自由贸易协定，将取代北美自由贸易协定(国会尚未批准)。除了这些大的战斗，还有一连串的琐碎活动。官员们在外国洗衣机和加拿大软木进口问题上发生了冲突。

词汇

Concession/让步；特许（权）

Breach/违反，破坏；打破

Barrage/阻塞

Skirmish/进行小规模战斗；发生小争论

Lumber/木材

Second, the scope of activity has been extended beyond physical goods by weaponising America’s network. Outright enemies such as Iran and Venezuela face tighter sanctions—last year 1,500 people, firms and vessels were added to the list, a record figure. The rest of the world faces a new regime for tech and finance. An executive order prohibits transactions in semiconductors and software made by foreign adversaries, and a law passed last year known as FIRRMA polices foreign investment into Silicon Valley. If a firm is blacklisted, banks usually refuse to deal with it, cutting it off from the dollar payments system. That is crippling—as two firms, ZTE and Rusal, discovered, briefly, last year.

其次，通过将美国的网络武器化，其活动范围已经超出了实物商品。像伊朗和委内瑞拉这样的宿敌面临着更严厉的制裁——去年有1500人、公司和船只被列入制裁名单，创历史新高。世界其他地区面临着一个新的科技和金融体系。一项行政命令禁止外国对手从事半导体和软件交易，去年通过的一项名为FIRRMA的法律对外国投资硅谷进行了监管。如果一家公司被列入黑名单，银行通常会拒绝处理，将其从美元支付系统中剔除。正如中兴通讯和俄铝这两家公司去年发现的那样，会对这些企业造成严重的损失。

词汇

Outright/完全的，彻底的

Adversary/对手；敌手

Such tools used to be reserved for times of war: the legal techniques used for surveillance of the payments system were developed to hunt al-Qaeda. Now a “national emergency” has been declared in tech. Officials have discretion to define what is a threat. Though they often clobber specific firms, such as Huawei, others are running scared (see article). If you run a global company, are you sure your Chinese clients are not about to be blacklisted?

这些工具过去是为战争时期保留的:用于监视支付系统的法律技术是为了追捕基地组织而开发的。如今，科技界已宣布进入“国家紧急状态”。官员们有权界定什么是威胁。尽管他们经常痛击特定的公司，如()，其他公司却感到害怕。如果你经营一家跨国公司，你确定你的()客户不会被列入黑名单吗?

词汇

Surveillance/监督；监视

al-Qaeda/基地组织（著名恐怖主义组织领袖为拉登）

discretion/  自由裁量权；谨慎；判断力

clobber/  击倒；痛打

The damage to America’s economy so far has been deceptively small. Tariffs cause agony in export hubs such as northern Mexico, but even if Mr Trump imposes all his threatened tariffs, the tax on imports would be worth only about 1% of America’s GDP. His poll ratings at home have held up, even as they have slumped abroad. His officials believe the experiment in weaponising America’s economic network has only just begun.

到目前为止，美国经济受到的损害看起来很小。关税在墨西哥北部等出口中心造成痛苦，但即使特朗普将所有可能征收的关税都强加于人，进口关税也只相当于美国GDP的1%左右。他在国内的民调支持率一直居高不下，尽管国外却一落千丈。他的官员认为，将美国经济网络武器化的实验才刚刚开始。

词汇

Deceptively/看似；不像看上去那么；比实际更显得

Agony/苦恼；极大的痛苦；临死的挣扎

In fact, the bill is mounting. America could have built a global coalition to press China to reform its economy, but it has now squandered precious goodwill. Allies looking for new trade deals with America, including post-Brexit Britain, will worry that a presidential tweet could scupper it after it has been signed. Retaliation in kind has begun. China has begun its own blacklist of foreign firms. And the risk of a clumsy mistake that triggers a financial panic is high. Imagine if America banned the $1trn of Chinese shares trading in New York, or cut off foreign banks.

事实上，该法案还在增加。美国本可以建立一个全球联盟，迫使()改革经济，但现在却浪费了宝贵的善意。寻求与美国达成新贸易协议的盟友，包括退欧后的英国，将担心总统的一条推文在签署后可能会破坏协议。以牙还牙的报复已经开始。()已经开始将外国公司列入黑名单。而且，一个愚蠢的错误引发金融恐慌的风险很高。想象一下，如果美国禁止价值1万亿美元的()股票在纽约交易，或者切断外国银行的业务。

词汇

Coalition/联合；结合，合并

Squander/浪费

Scupper/使船沉没；突袭

Retaliation in kind/以牙还牙

Clumsy/笨拙的

In the long run the American-led network is under threat. There are hints of mutiny—of America’s 35 European and Asian military allies, only three have so far agreed to ban Huawei. Efforts to build a rival global infrastructure will accelerate. China is creating its own courts to adjudicate commercial disputes with foreigners (see Chaguan). Europe is experimenting with building a new payments system to get round the Iran sanctions, which could in time be used elsewhere. China, and eventually India, will be keen to end their dependence on semiconductors from Silicon Valley. Mr Trump is right that America’s network gives it vast power. It will take decades, and cost a fortune, to replace it. But if you abuse it, ultimately you will lose it.

从长远来看，美国主导的网络受到了威胁。美国的盟友关系已经有了裂痕，美国在欧洲和亚洲的35个军事盟友中，只有3个同意禁止()。建立一个与之竞争的全球基础设施的努力将会加快。()正在建立自己的法庭来裁决与外国人的商业纠纷(看本期的茶馆专栏)。欧洲正在试验建立一套新的支付体系，以绕过对伊朗的制裁,而且这种新的支付体系迟早会被用于其他地方。()，还包括印度，都渴望结束对硅谷半导体的依赖。特朗普说得对，美国的网络赋予了它巨大的权力。要想取代它，将需要几十年的时间，而且要花费一大笔钱。但如果你滥用它，最终你会失去它。

词汇

Mutiny/兵变；叛乱；暴动