A Trump White House 特朗普白宫

The 45th president 第45任美国总统

What is Donald Trump likely to achieve in power?

特朗普执政将有何作为？

MUCH of the time, argues David Runciman, a British academic, politics matters little to most people. Then, suddenly, it matters all too much. Donald Trump’s term as America’s 45th president, which is due to begin with the inauguration on January 20th, stands to be one of those moments.

英国学者大卫·朗西曼（David Runciman）曾经说过，在大多数时候，对于大多数人而言，政治无关紧要。可转眼间，它又与每个人息息相关。作为美国第45任总统，唐纳德·特朗普将于1月20日正式就任。他走马上任之日，必是天翻地覆之时。

It is extraordinary how little American voters and the world at large feel they know about what Mr Trump intends. Those who back him are awaiting the biggest shake-up in Washington, DC, in half a century—though their optimism is an act of faith. Those who oppose him are convinced there will be chaos and ruin on an epoch-changing scale—though their despair is guesswork. All that just about everyone can agree on is that Mr Trump promises to be an entirely new sort of American president. The question is, what sort?

不论是美国选民，还是整个世界，谁都不清楚特朗普接下来打算做什么，这可真是绝无仅有了。那些支持特朗普的人们，正翘首企盼华盛顿半个世纪以来的最大变动——然而他们的乐观不过是信仰使然。而反对他的人们则坚信，将来天下大乱、覆巢毁卵之程度定为今世罕见——然而他们的绝望不过是臆测假想。不过，人人都同意一点，特朗普必定是一位与众不同的美国总统。而问题是，他的不同属于哪一种？

Inside the West Wig 

白宫风云

You may be tempted to conclude that it is simply too soon to tell. But there is enough information—from the campaign, the months since his victory and his life as a property developer and entertainer—to take a view of what kind of person Mr Trump is and how he means to fill the office first occupied by George Washington. There is also evidence from the team he has picked, which includes a mix of wealthy businessmen, generals and Republican activists (seeBriefing).

也许你会说，现在谈这些为时尚早。但是，从特朗普参加竞选，到胜选后的数月，乃至他作为房地产开发商和娱乐大亨的人生，已经充分说明了他是一个怎样的人，以及他打算在当年乔治·华盛顿工作过的办公室里做些什么。他钦点的白宫团队清一色由商业富豪、军事将领及共和党骨干组成，管中窥豹，可见一斑。

For sure, Mr Trump is changeable. He will tell theNew York Timesthat climate change is man-made in one breath and promise coal country that he will reopen its mines in the next. But that does not mean, as some suggest, that you must always shut out what the president says and wait to see what he does.

诚然，特朗普是善变的。他上一秒刚对《纽约时报》表示气候变化是人为造成的，下一秒就答应煤炭大国，美国将重启煤矿生产。然而，这并不代表你必须像某些人说的那样，对于这位新总统，莫要听其言，只能观其行。

When a president speaks, no easy distinction is to be made between word and deed. When Mr Trump says that NATO is obsolete, as he did to two European journalists last week, he makes its obsolescence more likely, even if he takes no action. Moreover, Mr Trump has long held certain beliefs and attitudes that sketch out the lines of a possible presidency. They suggest that the almost boundless Trumpian optimism on display among American businesspeople deserves to be tempered by fears about trade protection and geopolitics, as well as questions about how Mr Trump will run his administration.

身为总统，讲话时，是不该在言行一致问题上轻易留人口实的。上周，当特朗普对两名欧洲记者说“北约已然过时”的时候，他未采取任何行动，就已让其“过时”的可能性变得更大。此外，特朗普一直坚持的某些看法和态度，已经勾勒出其就职总统后的大致线路了。也就是说，美国商人们漫无边际的特朗普式乐观主义不能太过了，对贸易保护和地缘政治的担忧、以及对特朗普政府执政方式的质疑，都理应让这种乐观降降温。

Start with the optimism. Since November’s election the S&P500 index is up by 6%, to reach record highs. Surveys show that business confidence has soared. Both reflect hopes that Mr Trump will cut corporate taxes, leading companies to bring foreign profits back home. A boom in domestic spending should follow which, combined with investment in infrastructure and a programme of deregulation, will lift the economy and boost wages.

先说乐观情绪。自从11月特朗普胜选以来，美国股市标准普尔500指数上涨了6%，达到历史高点。研究显示，公司信心显著回升。两种迹象均表明，人们对特朗普寄予了厚望，期待他通过减税政策，引领公司将国外利润带回到国内来。紧随其后的是加大国内财政支出，基础设施投资与减政计划并举，从而提振经济并推动工资上涨。

Done well, tax reform would confer lasting benefits (seeFree exchange), as would a thoughtful and carefully designed programme of infrastructure investment and deregulation. But if such programmes are poorly executed, there is the risk of a sugar-rush as capital chases opportunities that do little to enhance the productive potential of the economy.

干得好的话，税务改革将带来持久好处，思虑周全、精心设计的基础设施投资方案和减政计划亦是如此。但是，一旦这些项目执行不力，则有“三分钟热度”的风险，因为资本所追逐的机会，是无助于巩固经济生产潜力的。

That is not the only danger. If prices start to rise faster, pressure will mount on the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates. The dollar will soar and countries that have amassed large dollar debts, many of them emerging markets, may well buckle. One way or another, any resulting instability will blow back into America. If the Trump administration reacts to widening trade deficits with extra tariffs and non-tariff barriers, then the instability will only be exacerbated. Should Mr Trump right from the start set out to engage foreign exporters from countries such as China, Germany and Mexico in a conflict over trade, he would do grave harm to the global regime that America itself created after the second world war.

而这并非唯一风险。一旦物价开始飞涨，美联储的加息压力就会增大。于是乎，美元走强，那些持有巨额美债的国家会苦不堪言，而他们当中，大部分都是新兴市场国家。无论以何种方式，由此产生的不稳定因素都会反过来影响美国。面对不断扩大的贸易赤字、高额关税和非关税壁垒，如果特朗普政府采取行动，势必会让这些不稳定因素愈发激化。倘若特朗普一开始就将中国、德国、墨西哥等外国进口商卷入贸易冲突当中，那么二战之后美国一手打造的全球体制将会遭受重创。

Just as Mr Trump underestimates the fragility of the global economic system, so too does he misread geopolitics. Even before taking office, Mr Trump has hacked away at the decades-old, largely bipartisan cloth of American foreign policy. He has casually disparaged the value of the European Union, which his predecessors always nurtured as a source of stability. He has compared Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and the closest of allies, unfavourably to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president and an old foe. He has savaged Mexico, whose prosperity and goodwill matter greatly to America’s southern states. And, most recklessly, he has begun to pull apart America’s carefully stitched dealings with the rising superpower, China—imperilling the most important bilateral relationship of all.

特朗普不仅低估了全球经济体制的脆弱性，还对地缘政治产生了误读。还没上任，他就撕开了民主党和共和党沿用了几十年之久的外交政策的遮羞布。美国历任总统将欧盟的价值视作稳定的源泉，一直悉心呵护，而特朗普却予以蔑视。德国总理默克尔是美国最亲密的盟友，而特朗普却将默克尔与美国的宿敌、俄罗斯总统普京相提并论。他对墨西哥猛烈抨击，而墨西哥的繁荣和友好对于美国南部各州而言至关重要。而最不过脑子的，是他已经对美国苦心经营的中美关系开始了破坏，而中国是一个正在崛起的超级大国，中美关系是所有双边关系当中的重中之重。

The idea running through Mr Trump’s diplomacy is that relations between states follow the art of the deal. Mr Trump acts as if he can get what he wants from sovereign states by picking fights that he is then willing to settle—at a price, naturally. His mistake is to think that countries are like businesses. In fact, America cannot walk away from China in search of another superpower to deal with over the South China Sea. Doubts that have been sown cannot be uprooted, as if the game had all along been a harmless exercise in price discovery. Alliances that take decades to build can be weakened in months.

特朗普的外交政策所贯彻的思想是：国与国的关系遵循的是交易的艺术。特朗普似乎认为，通过挑起他乐于解决的那些争端，他就可以从其他主权国家那里得到自己想要的东西，所以才有了那些所作所为。而他的错误在于，把国家当成了公司。实际上，要想寻找另一个大国来处理中国南海问题，美国就不可能绕开中国。怀疑的种子一旦播下，就无法根除，就像在价格发现过程中，博弈将会贯穿始终一样，只不过怀疑会带来危害，而博弈则不会。同盟关系的建立需要耗费几十年时间，而削弱只需短短几个月。

Dealings between sovereign states tend towards anarchy—because, ultimately, there is no global government to impose order and no means of coercion but war. For as long as Mr Trump is unravelling the order that America created, and from which it gains so much, he is getting his country a terrible deal.

主权国家之间的交易极有可能导致混乱，因为，最终不会有一个全球政府来维持公道，所以除了开战，别无他法。特朗普正在瓦解美国一手打造的世界秩序，而这个秩序对美国有万般好处，而他给美国拉来的这单生意简直糟糕透顶。

Hair Force One

 普军一号

So troubling is this prospect that it raises one further question. How will Mr Trump’s White House work? On the one hand you have party stalwarts, including the vice-president, Mike Pence; the chief of staff, Reince Priebus; and congressional Republicans, led by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. On the other are the agitators—particularly Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and Michael Flynn. The titanic struggle between normal politics and insurgency, mediated by Mr Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law,Jared Kushner, will determine just how revolutionary this presidency is.

未来麻烦不断，还将产生新的问题。特朗普的白宫该怎么运转？一方面，他有坚定的共和党拥护者，副总统彭斯、共和党主席普利巴斯、还有Paul Ryan、Mitch McConnell等人为首的共和党国会议员。而另一方面，也不乏煽风点火之辈，尤其是Steve Bannon（译者注：特朗普的首席策略师及高级顾问）、Peter Navarro（译者注：特朗普的白宫国家贸易委员会主席）和Michael Flynn（译者注：特朗普的国家安全顾问）。在循规蹈矩与标新立异的政治路线之间，会有一场旷世较量，特朗普的女儿伊万卡和女婿库斯纳会从中调停，其结果将决定此届总统任期究竟能带来多大的颠覆。

As Mr Trump assumes power, the world is on edge. From the Oval Office, presidents can do a modest amount of good. Sadly, they can also do immense harm.

随着特朗普的就任，世界变得不知所措了。身在白宫，总统既可以励精图治，亦能够祸乱朝纲。

原文出处：经济学人网站

译者：linda10030

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