按: 随着特朗普宣誓就职，美国历史，或者说世界历史，开启了新的一页。未来会更好吗，还是更糟？我们来看看最新一期经济学人封面文章的分析
A TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

The 45th president

What is Donald Trump likely to achieve in power?
1011 words

1. 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.

2. 一个英国学者David Runciman说，在很多时候政治对大多数人来说并不重要。然后，突然某个时刻，它变得至关重要。唐纳德·特朗普作为美国第45届总统的任期将于1月20日开始，这将是其中的一个时刻。

3. 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?

4. 美国选民和世界上大部分人感到他们对特朗普的意图知之甚少，这是非同寻常的。那些支持他的人正在等待华盛顿特区半个世纪以来最大的变革——尽管他们的乐观主义只是一种基于信仰的行为。反对他的人相信，将会有天翻地覆的混乱和毁灭——尽管他们的绝望只是猜测。所有人都同意的是，特朗普承诺成为一个史无前例的美国总统。问题是，他会什么样的史无前例？

shake-up : a process by which an organization makes a lot of big changes in a short time to improve its effectiveness
e.g. a big shakeup of the education system

Inside the West Wig

3. 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.
4. 你可能会认为，现在说起来太早了。但是有足够的信息——从竞选活动，他胜选的几个月以及他作为房地产开发商和艺人的人生——表明特朗普是什么样的人，他打算如何治理乔治·华盛顿曾统治的国家。还有来自他选择的团队的证据，包括各色的富有商人，将军和共和党活动家。
5. For sure, Mr Trump is changeable. He will tell the New York Times that 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.
6. 当然，特朗普先生是易变的。他将告诉“纽约时报”气候变化是人为的，而紧接着向煤炭地区承诺他将重新开矿。但正如一些人所说，这并不意味着你必须总是对这位总统说的置若罔闻，只是等待看他做什么。

shut out: If you shut out a thought or a feeling, you prevent yourself from thinking or feeling it. = block out
e.g. I shut out the memory which was too painful to dwell on.

5. 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.
6. 当总统说话时，人们很难区分在语言和行动之间的不同。当特朗普说北约已经过时了，就像他上周对两位欧洲记者所说的那样，即使他不采取行动，他也使得北约更可能变得过时。此外，特朗普长期以来一直坚持的某些信念和态度已经超出了总统职位的界限。它们表明，美国商人间所表现出的几乎无边无际的乐观主义有所缓和，出于对贸易保护和地缘政治的恐惧，以及对特朗普如何施政的质疑。

temper : to make something less severe or extreme

6. 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.

7. 先从乐观开始讨论。自11月选举以来，标普500指数上涨6％，达到历史新高。调查显示，商业信心已经飙升。两者都反映了特朗普将减少公司税，带领公司将外国利润带国内的希望。随之而来的是国内消费的猛增，再加上基础设施投资和放松管制计划，将拉动经济、提高工资。

8. Done well, tax reform would confer lasting benefits, 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.

9. 如果做得好，税务改革将带来持久的利益，一个深思熟虑和精心设计的基础设施投资和放松管制计划也会带来持久的利益。但是，如果这些方案执行得不好，那么就可能有过度亢奋的风险，因为资本追逐的机会几乎对提高经济的生产潜力没有帮助。

10. 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.

11. 这不是唯一的危险。如果价格开始上涨得更快，美联储将面临加息的压力。美元将飙升，已经积累大量美元债务的国家，其中许多是新兴市场，可能会崩溃。无论何种方式，任何导致的不稳定将对美国产生副作用。如果特朗普政府以额外关税扩大贸易逆差和非关税壁垒做为回应，那么不稳定性只会加剧。如果特朗普先生从上任一开始就和来自中国，德国和墨西哥等国家的外国出口商发生贸易冲突，他将对美国在第二次世界大战后创造的全球制度造成严重伤害。

buckle: To give way; collapse

9. 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.
10. 正如特朗普低估了全球经济系统的脆弱性，他也误读了地缘政治。即使在上任之前，特朗普先生已经破坏了有几十年历史、美国主要两党派的外交政策。他随便贬低了欧洲联盟的价值，而他的前任(奥巴马)总是扶持它作为稳定之源。他不恰当地拿美国最亲近的盟友、德国总理安德拉·默克尔和美国的宿敌、俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京进行比较。他猛烈抨击墨西哥，这个国家的繁荣和善意对美国南方各州非常重要。而且，最肆无忌惮的是，他已经开始破坏美国与正在崛起的超级大国——中国间小心缝合的关系，危及这个美国最重要的双边关系。

hacked away at : to cut something roughly or violently
e.g. She hacked away at the ice, trying to make a hole.
savaged: to criticize someone or something very severely
imperilling: to put something or someone in danger = endanger
e.g. Tax increases now might imperil economic recovery.

10. 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.
11. 贯彻在特朗普外交政策的理念是，国家之间的关系遵循交易的艺术。特朗普行动原则似乎是:先挑起争端，然后以某种代价作为妥协，以此从主权国家那里得到他想要的。他的错误是认为国家就像企业。事实上，美国不能离开中国寻求另一个超级大国来应对南中国海问题。已经植入的疑问不能被根除，就好像这个把戏在价格发现中是无害的一样。需要几十年才能建立的联盟会在几个月内被削弱。
12. 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.
13. 主权国家之间的交易倾向于无政府状态—— 因为最终没有全球政府强加秩序，除了战争没有强迫手段。只要特朗普先生破坏了美国创造的、从中获得如此多利益的全球秩序，他就会让他的国家做一场糟糕的交易。

coercion: the use of threats or orders to make someone do something they do not want to do

Hair Force One

12. 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.

13. 这个前景如此令人不安以至于它提出了另一个问题。特朗普的白宫政府如何工作？一方面，你有坚定的党内拥护者，包括副总统迈克·波斯，总参谋长Reince Priebus，和以Paul Ryan和Mitch McConnell为首的国会中的共和党人。另一方面是反对派——特别是Steve Bannon，Peter Navarro和Michael Flynn。正常的政治和叛乱之间的剧烈斗争(由特朗普的女儿伊万卡和女婿Jared Kushner从中斡旋)将决定这届总统的革新性有多少。

14. 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.

15. 随着特朗普的掌权，世界处于焦虑不安之中。从白宫椭圆形办公室，总统们可以行不少善事。可悲的是，他们也可能造成巨大的伤害。

on edge: nervous, especially because you are expecting something unpleasant to happen