https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/2025...-china/zh-hant/

川普讓美國陷入了一場沒有勝算的戰爭

川普總統在其荒唐的全球徵收關稅計劃上基本讓步了，對此我有諸多感想，但總體而言，有一種想法總是在我腦海中揮之不去：既然請了小丑來，就等著看馬戲吧。我的美國同胞們，我們請來了一群小丑啊。

想想川普、他的首席蠢材——商務部長霍華德·盧特尼克、助理首席蠢材——財政部長史考特·貝森特，以及副助理首席蠢材——貿易顧問彼得·納瓦羅，在過去幾週裡，他們反覆告訴我們：川普絕不會在關稅問題上讓步——理由任君挑選：需要阻止吩坦尼殺死我們的孩子、需要增加稅收為未來的減稅埋單、需要迫使世界各國多買美國貨。他根本不在乎華爾街的富人朋友對股市大跌的抱怨。

基於這些堅定不移的「原則」，川普給市場造成了巨大混亂——無疑導致無數美國人在恐慌中「割肉」拋售——之後，川普在週三突然大反轉，宣布對大多數國家暫緩徵收部分關稅，為期90天，中國除外。

此舉向世界和中國人傳達的信息是：「我頂不住壓力了。」若出書的話，書名可以叫《認慫的藝術》。



What Trump Just Cost America

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

Trump just put us into a no-win war.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

What a pathetic, shameful performance. Happy Liberation Day.