美国与中国冲突的经济代价
作者：斯蒂芬·罗奇 2023 年 4 月 24 日
在一次涉及美中关系的广泛演讲中，美国财政部长珍妮特耶伦改变了与中国的接触条款，将国家安全问题置于经济考虑之上。 然而，美国的案件不是基于确凿的证据，而是基于对中国恶意意图的推定。
耶伦的观点非常符合目前笼罩美国的强烈反华情绪。 正如《金融时报》专栏作家爱德华·卢斯所说，"新华盛顿共识”坚持认为，接触是美中关系的原罪，因为它让中国可以自由发挥美国以交易为中心的天真。 中国在 2001 年加入世界贸易组织在这方面得到了最高评价：美国开放了市场，但据称中国违背了变得更像美国的承诺。 根据这个令人费解但被广泛接受的论点，参与为安全风险和侵犯人权打开了大门。 美国官员现在决心关上那扇门。
还有更多。 拜登总统即将发布一项行政命令，将限制美国公司对中国某些“敏感技术”的外国直接投资 (FDI)，例如人工智能和量子计算。 美方否认中方有关这些措施旨在扼杀中国发展的说法。 就像针对中国电信巨头华为的制裁以及那些被考虑针对社交媒体应用程序 TikTok 的制裁一样，这一制裁也在国家安全的无定形幌子下被证明是正当的。
美国的案件不是基于确凿的证据，而是基于与中国的军民两用融合相关的恶意意图的推定。 然而，美国在其自身的安全融合问题上苦苦挣扎——即美国对创新的投资不足与中国技术的真实和想象威胁之间的模糊区分。
值得注意的是，耶伦的讲话让两个超级大国达成一致。 在去年 10 月举行的中国共产党第 20 次全国代表大会上，中国国家主席习近平的开场白也强调了国家安全。 由于两国都同样担心各自对对方构成的安全威胁，因此从接触到对抗的转变是相互的。
耶伦将这种转变描述为一种权衡是完全正确的。 但她只是暗示了冲突的经济后果。 量化这些后果并不简单。 但美国公众应该知道，当美国领导人重新思考一种极其重要的经济关系时，利害攸关的是什么。 一些引人入胜的新研究对解决这个问题大有帮助。
国际货币基金组织刚刚发表的一项研究（在 2023 年 4 月的《世界经济展望》中进行了总结）首先尝试确定成本。 国际货币基金组织的经济学家通过“放缓化”的视角来看待这个问题：商品和资本跨境流动的减少，反映在“回流”（将离岸生产带回国内）的地缘战略战略和耶伦自己所说的“朋友支持”中 ”（将离岸生产从对手转移到志同道合的联盟成员）。
此类行动导致“双重集团”外国直接投资碎片化。 国际货币基金组织估计，从长期来看，美国集团和中国集团的形成可能会使全球产出减少多达 2%。 作为世界上最大的经济体，美国将占放弃产出的很大一部分。
欧洲央行行长克里斯蒂娜·拉加德最近强调了一个不同的渠道，不断升级的美中冲突可能会对经济表现产生不利影响。 根据欧洲央行工作人员的研究，她重点关注由冲突驱动的 FDI 碎片化所暗示的供应链中断导致的更高成本和通货膨胀。 欧洲央行的研究得出结论，地缘战略冲突可能在短期内将通胀推高 5%，在长期内推高 1% 左右。 随之而来的是对货币政策和金融稳定的附带影响。
总的来说，这些基于模型的冲突成本计算表明产出较低和通货膨胀率较高的滞胀组合——在当今脆弱的经济环境中这不是一个微不足道的考虑因素。 它们与经济理论相吻合。 国家与其他国家进行贸易以获得比较优势的好处。 外国投资的流入和流出都寻求获得类似的收益，为在本国市场面临更高成本的跨国公司提供离岸效率，并吸引外国资本支持国内产能扩张和创造就业机会。 无论政治制度和经济结构如何不同，美国和中国都是如此。 因此，冲突会减少这些好处。
然而，美国有一个重要的转折点：国内储蓄的长期不足使与中国发生冲突的经济后果变得截然不同。 2022 年，美国净储蓄——家庭、企业和政府部门经折旧调整后的储蓄——下降至仅占国民收入的 1.6%，远低于 1960 年至 2020 年 5.8% 的长期平均水平。缺乏储蓄和缺乏储蓄 为了投资和发展，美国充分利用美元作为世界主要储备货币的“过度特权”，自由地从国外进口盈余储蓄，维持巨额经常项目和多边贸易逆差以吸引外国资本。
因此，储蓄不足的美国的经济利益与其巨大的贸易和资本流动失衡紧密相关。 除非美国国内储蓄出现极不可能的复苏，否则出于任何原因（例如，对中国的安全担忧）损害这些流动都不会没有有意义的经济和金融后果。 上面引用的研究表明，这些后果将表现为经济增长放缓、通货膨胀率上升以及美元可能走软。
对于已经处于商业周期不稳定点的美国经济来说，这几乎不是一个理想的结果。 国家安全的权衡不应掉以轻心。 美国也不应该盲目接受美国过度炒作安全威胁的倾向。
The Economic Costs of America’s Conflict with China
In a wide-ranging speech on the US-China relationship, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reversed the terms of engagement with China, prioritizing national-security concerns over economic considerations. The US case, however, rests not on hard evidence but on the presumption of China's nefarious intent.
NEW HAVEN – Five years into a once-unthinkable trade war with China, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen chose her words carefully on April 20. In a wide-ranging speech, she reversed the terms of US engagement with China, prioritizing national-security concerns over economic considerations. That formally ended a 40-year emphasis on economics and trade as the anchor to the world’s most important bilateral relationship. Yellen’s stance on security was almost confrontational: “We will not compromise on these concerns, even when they force trade-offs with our economic interests.”
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Yellen’s view is very much in line with the strident anti-China sentiment that has now gripped the United States. The “new Washington consensus,” as Financial Times columnist Edward Luce calls it, maintains that engagement was the original sin of the US-China relationship, because it gave China free rein to take advantage of America’s deal-focused naiveté. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 gets top billing in this respect: the US opened its markets, but China purportedly broke its promise to become more like America. Engagement, according to this convoluted but widely accepted argument, opened the door to security risks and human-rights abuses. American officials are now determined to slam that door shut.
There is more to come. President Joe Biden is about to issue an executive order that will place restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) by US firms in certain “sensitive technologies” in China, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The US rejects the Chinese allegation that these measures are aimed at stifling Chinese development. Like sanctions against the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and those being considered against the social-media app TikTok, this one, too, is being justified under the amorphous guise of national security.
The US case rests not on hard evidence but on the presumption of nefarious intent tied to China’s dual-purpose military-civilian fusion. Yet the US struggles with its own security fusion – namely, the fuzzy distinction between America’s under-investment in innovation and the real and imagined threats of Chinese technology.
Significantly, Yellen’s speech put both superpowers on the same page. At the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress last October, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s opening message also stressed national security. With both countries equally fearful of the security threat that each poses to the other, the shift from engagement to confrontation is mutual.
Yellen is entirely correct in framing this shift as a tradeoff. But she only hinted at the economic consequences of conflict. Quantifying these consequences is not simple. But the American public deserves to know what is at stake when its leaders rethink a vitally important economic relationship. Some fascinating new research goes a long way toward addressing this issue.
A just-published study by the International Monetary Fund (summarized in the April 2023 World Economic Outlook) takes a first stab at identifying the costs. IMF economists view the problem through the lens of “slowbalization”: the reduction of cross-border flows of goods and capital, reflected in geostrategic strategies of “reshoring” (bringing offshore production back home) and what Yellen herself has called “friend-shoring” (shifting offshore production from adversaries to like-minded members of alliances).
Such actions result in “dual bloc” FDI fragmentation. The IMF estimates that the formation of a US bloc and a China bloc could reduce global output by as much as 2% over the longer term. As the world’s largest economy, America will account for a significant share of foregone output.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde recently stressed a different channel through which an escalating US-China conflict could adversely affect economic performance. Drawing on research by ECB staff, she focuses on the higher costs and inflation resulting from supply-chain disruptions implied by conflict-driven FDI fragmentation. The ECB study concludes that geostrategic conflict could boost inflation by as much as 5% in the short run and around 1% over the longer term. Collateral effects on monetary policy and financial stability would follow.
Collectively, these model-based calculations of the costs of conflict imply a stagflationary combination of lower output and higher inflation – hardly a trivial consideration in today’s fragile economic climate. And they dovetail with economic theory. Countries trade with others to reap the benefits of comparative advantage. Both inward and outward flows of foreign investment seek to achieve similar benefits, offering offshore efficiencies for multinational corporations that face higher costs in their home markets and attracting foreign capital to support domestic capacity expansion and job creation. Regardless of their different political systems and economic structures, this is true for both America and China. It follows that conflict will reduce these benefits.
Yet there is an important twist for the US: a chronic shortfall of domestic saving casts the economic consequences of conflict with China in a very different light. In 2022, net US saving – the depreciation-adjusted saving of households, businesses, and the government sector – fell to just 1.6% of national income, far below the longer-term 5.8% average from 1960 to 2020. Lacking in saving and wanting to invest and grow, the US takes full advantage of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” as the world’s dominant reserve currency and freely imports surplus saving from abroad, running a massive current-account and multilateral trade deficit to attract foreign capital.
As such, the economic interests of saving-short America are tightly aligned with its outsize imbalances of trade and capital flows. Barring a highly unlikely resurgence of domestic US saving, compromising those flows for any reason – say, security concerns over China – is not without meaningful economic and financial consequences. The research cited above suggests those consequences will take the form of slower economic growth, higher inflation, and possibly a weaker dollar.
This is hardly an ideal outcome for a US economy that is already at a precarious point in the business cycle. The tradeoff for national security should not be taken lightly. Nor should the US penchant to over-hype the security threat be accepted on blind faith.
