Trump's 'Liberation Day' Tariffs: Fair trade or global trade war?

PS書評視角：習近平的威權統治　延續毛澤東路線 PS編輯部 2023年12月30日 在這個反思的季節，Project Syndicate的投稿人延續年度傳統，分享今年對他們影響最深的一本書。儘管關於戰爭、戰略和地緣政治的新書與近作不可避免地受到關注，但一系列幾十年前的書籍也入榜，凸顯了在這個訊息爆炸的時代，富有思想深度的作品禁得起時間考驗。世界看似愈來愈受到離心力、破壞性技術、包羅萬象的新奇感驅動，此刻最好的做法或許是暫停一下，尋找禁得起時間考驗的洞見。 馮客，《毛澤東之後的中國》 Frank Dikötter,《China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower》, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. 這本書對於中國經濟奇蹟提出一個與傳統觀點截然不同的看法。它提出有力的主張，稱六四天安門事件後，北京當局加大鎮壓異議分子期間，外國資本湧入中國（受益於低工資，且往往是被人為壓低的工資 ），成為中國經濟成長的一個關鍵因素。本書也打破了鄧小平等領導人掌舵下，傑出技術官僚制定決策的神話。事實上，共產黨菁英往往是對當地的經濟發展被動作出反應，有時甚至試圖阻撓經濟發展。更重要的是，這本書主張，習近平主席更赤裸裸的威權統治，與其說是突然與不久前的過去切割，不如說是在很多方面延續了很久以前就開始的趨勢。 馬茲魯伊《全球化時代的黑人賠償問題》 Ali Mazrui,《Black Reparations in the Era of Globalization》, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, 2002. 已故肯亞知識分子馬茲魯伊的重要著作問世20年之後，我們應該回顧一下這些文章是多麼富有遠見，至今仍深具影響力。馬茲魯伊提議，歐洲應對其長達四世紀的奴隸制度和殖民主義導致散居在非洲、加勒比海和美洲的黑人後裔進行賠償。他建議西方政府為非洲的民主化提供物質和道義支持。他力陳，西方應降低對非洲發展的阻礙，包括取消非洲的外債。他還提出非洲「中途計畫」，這類似 1945 年戰後協助歐洲重建的 120 億美元馬歇爾計畫。 儘管並非所有建議都被採納，但在「黑人的命也是命」等團體的推動下，整個非洲及散居在海外的黑人後裔，已出現積極的賠償運動。因此，德國在2021年為它在1904-1908年期間對納米比亞大約7.5萬赫雷羅族（Herero）和納馬族（Nama）進行種族滅絕的行為致歉，並承諾在30年內賠償約11億歐元。此外，荷蘭（在即將卸任的政府領導下）為其在買賣奴隸扮演的角色道歉，並成立了一個2億歐元的基金，解決遺留的問題。其他更惡劣的帝國主義國家，如英國、法國、比利時、葡萄牙和義大利，是否也會跟進，為其違反人類的歷史重罪贖罪呢？ 巴爾丹 《缺乏安全感的世界》 Pranab Bardan, 《A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment In Rich And Poor Countries》, Harvard University Press, 2022. 如果你認為過去40年來最大的經濟問題是嚴重的不均——悲苦和奢華並列，那麼請再想一想。正如經濟學家巴爾丹（Pranab Bardan）所指，更大的問題其實是經濟不安全感。從辛辛那提汽車零件組裝工廠的工人到巴西聖保羅的快遞司機，勞工的不滿無法透過十年前「占領華爾街」運動與會人士揮舞的收入分配表充分表達。其實，工人的不滿源於他們期望辛勤工作所能得到的回報，以及他們及家人的實際所得，兩者之間存在巨大差距。 理論上，我們承諾用自由、開放貿易帶來的額外收益，補償受到傷害的家庭、社區和勞工。但實際上我們沒有履行承諾，現在反民主的民粹主義者透過抨擊撙節政策，獲取政治利益。我們希望更多的經濟學家能夠將注意力從基尼係數轉移到退休金失血、預防性醫療不足、安全且可負擔得起的住房短缺、貧窮落後社區生活品質下降等問題上。要理解社會往下流的現象，關鍵在於對經濟存在不安全感，而非財富不均。 達馬吉歐 《笛卡爾的錯錯誤》 Antonio Damasio, 《Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain》， Penguin Books (Paperback), 2005. 安東尼歐．達馬吉歐（Antonio Damasio）指出，我們正處於一個歷史性轉變的階段，重新認識身體對於大腦的重要性，而不是僅強調大腦對身體的影響。雖然本書首次問世的時間差不多在30年前，但它仍然是一本有用的指南，指導我們了解科學新發現對哲學和醫學的重要意義。 馬毅仁 《賣國賊： 二戰中三個關於欺騙與生存的故事》 Ian Buruma,《The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II》, Penguin Press, 2023. 俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭已兩年，外界目睹俄羅斯社會令人震驚的轉變。俄國當局升高對異議人士的壓迫，與克里姆林宮菁英的合作變得更複雜、更小心翼翼，並且達到自蘇聯解體以來所未見的程度。馬毅仁這本書出現得再及時不過了。透過納粹佔領荷蘭期間一位猶太掮客、一位為日本從事間諜活動的滿洲公主、以及一名親近納粹的芬蘭按摩師等人所編織的神話，馬毅仁深入挖掘普通人對於背叛、勾結和自我辯護的無窮能力。當我們反思今天的俄羅斯，發現它與1940年代的德國和日本有著許多相似之處，不禁會產生一種印象：戰時的威權政權多少都有些相似。 克萊恩 《幽靈影：鏡像世界之旅》 Naomi Klein, 《Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World》, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023. 這本書結合了回憶錄以及對新冠大流行病的分析。本書追隨進步活躍人士克萊恩的腳步，愈來愈多人誤認她是在網路散播假訊息的狂人娜歐蜜．沃爾夫（Naomi Wolf）。在我們所創造的數位世界中，可能已分不清這個娜歐蜜和另一個娜歐蜜有何區別，顯示我們的論述已變得無事實根據和失去理智的程度。克萊恩是完全理解新冠如何改變我們政治的少數評論員之一。（系列二之一） （翻譯：張瑩，責任編輯：楊淑華） © Project Syndicate （原標題為《PS Commentators' Best Reads in 2023》 PS Commentators’ Best Reads in 2023 Dec 15, 2023 PS EDITORS Another year of global turmoil and uncertainty has prompted a search for answers in books from both the past year and previous decades. But as one new primer on the limits of rationality shows, a world that makes sense may be more than we can hope for. In this season of reflection, Project Syndicate contributors continue an annual tradition of sharing the book that resonated most with them this year. Although new and recent titles concerning war, strategy, and geopolitics inevitably feature prominently, there is also a robust selection of books from previous decades, underscoring the enduring value of thoughtful writing in an age of hyperactive information flows. At a time when the world increasingly seems to be driven by centrifugal forces, disruptive technologies, and an all-encompassing sense of novelty, we could do worse than to press pause and seek insights that have stood the test of time. DARON ACEMOGLU Frank Dikötter, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. This book presents a very different take on the Chinese economic miracle than the conventional wisdom. It convincingly shows how foreign capital pouring into China (to benefit from low – and often artificially suppressed – wages) became a key ingredient of economic growth at a time of intensifying repression following the Tiananmen Square massacre. It also shatters the myth of competent technocratic policymaking under leaders such as Deng Xiaoping. In reality, Communist Party elites were often reacting to, and sometimes trying to stop, economic developments on the ground. Most radically, the book makes the case that, rather than being a sharp break with the recent past, President Xi Jinping’s more nakedly authoritarian rule is in many ways a continuation of trends that started long ago. ADEKEYE ADEBAJO Ali Mazrui, Black Reparations in the Era of Globalization, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, 2002. A generation after the publication of the late Kenyan intellectual Ali Mazrui’s important book, it is worth recalling how visionary these essays were – and how influential they remain. Mazrui proposed reparations for four centuries of European slavery and colonialism in Africa and its Caribbean and American diasporas. He suggested that Western governments should offer material and moral support for democracy in Africa. He pushed for a reduction of Western impediments to Africa’s development, including by annulling its external debt. And he proposed an African “Middle Passage Plan” like the $12 billion Marshall Plan for the post-1945 reconstruction of Europe. Though not all of these proposals have been adopted, an active reparations movement – driven by groups like Black Lives Matter – has emerged across Africa and its diaspora. As a result, Germany apologized, in 2021, for its genocide of an estimated 75,000 Herero and Nama in Namibia in 1904-08, and has now committed €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in compensation to Namibia over 30 years. Similarly, the Netherlands (under the outgoing government) has apologized for its role in the slave trade and established a €200 million fund to address the lingering consequences. Will more egregious imperial abusers such as Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Italy follow suit and start to atone for their historical crimes against humanity? TERESA GHILARDUCCI Pranab Bardan, A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment In Rich And Poor Countries, Harvard University Press, 2022. If you think massive inequality – the juxtaposition of squalor and opulence – is the most salient economic issue of the last 40 years, think again. As economist Pranab Bardan shows, the bigger problem is economic insecurity. From an auto-parts assembler in Cincinnati to a delivery driver in São Paulo, Brazil, workers’ disaffection is not explained by the kind of income distribution tables that Occupy Wall Street activists waved around a decade ago. Rather, it comes from the gap between what workers expected from their hard work and what they and their families got. On paper, we promised to compensate losing families, communities, and workers with the additional gains from free, open trade. But we didn’t, and now anti-democratic populists are making political gains by railing against austerity. One hopes more economists will shift their focus from Gini coefficients to the erosion of pensions, lack of access to preventive health care, a shortage of safe and affordable housing, and the declining quality of life in left-behind communities. Insecurity, not inequality, is the key to understanding the grim politics of downward mobility. WILLIAM A. HASELTINE Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Penguin Books (Paperback), 2005. Antonio Damasio shows that we are undergoing a historical transition in our understanding of how important the body is to the brain, and not just the brain to the body. Though this book first appeared almost 30 years ago, it remains a useful guide to the important implications of new scientific discoveries for both philosophy and medicine. NINA L. KHRUSHCHEVA Ian Buruma, The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II, Penguin Press, 2023. In the last two years of Russia’s war against Ukraine, I have witnessed a shocking transformation of Russian society. As domestic authorities have become more repressive, collaboration with Kremlin elites has become more elaborate – and has reached a scale unseen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The lesson of Ian Buruma’s book could not be timelier. Unraveling the mythologies of a Jewish fixer in occupied Holland, a Manchu princess spying for Japan, and a Finnish masseuse who cozied up to the Nazis, Buruma plumbs ordinary people’s endless capacity for betrayal, collusion, and self-justification. When one reflects on Russia today, and the many features it shares with 1940s Germany and Japan, one is left with the impression that all wartime authoritarian regimes are more or less alike. IVAN KRASTEV Naomi Klein, Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023. I am not a devoted fan of Naomi Klein, but I found her new book profound and profoundly disturbing. A mix of memoir and analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the book follows Klein, the progressive activist, as she is increasingly mistaken online for Naomi Wolf, the misinformation-peddling lunatic. In the digital world we have created, one Naomi can become indistinguishable from another, revealing the extent to which our discourse has become unanchored and unhinged. Klein is one of the few critics to have fully grasped how the pandemic transformed our politics. ALAA MURABIT Mosab Abu Toha, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, City Lights Books, 2022. We simply cannot make critical policy decisions without rigorous data. But what is often lacking is a deep understanding of how data-driven decisions affect people’s daily lives. As a tool for storytelling, poetry illustrates the human experience in ways that quantification simply cannot. Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha’s Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is a case in point. Through verse, he offers the unique perspective of someone who has spent an entire life in Gaza. I finished this work with a deeper understanding of humanity and compassion – an appreciation that now informs my own work as a global policymaker and physician. THITINAN PONGSUDHIRAK Tim Marshall, The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World, Scribner, 2023. Readers who marveled at Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography (2016) and The Power of Geography (2022) will appreciate this latest addition. The Future of Geography extends his thesis about the determinative force of geography. International cooperation is desperately needed in outer space, but is being crowded out by competition among the great powers, auguring future “star wars” among nation-states. The book shows that global public goods are as imperative in space as they are on Earth. As with climate change and artificial intelligence, outer space is another domain in which enlightened self-interest demands collective action. QIAN LIU Anton La Guardia, Holy Land, Unholy War: Israelis and Palestinians, Penguin UK (Paperback), 2007. Though it first appeared more than 20 years ago (in hardback), this is a must read for anyone who wants to know the history of Israel and Palestine in all its depth and complexity. A long-time editor and reporter at The Economist, La Guardia takes extraordinary pains to provide a balanced, thought-provoking, and revelatory picture of the situation on the ground. Readers be warned: the complexities he reveals are more unsettling than what you will find in any textbook on the subject. They may even change how you view the world and your own life. The good news is that you may come away with a greater appreciation of the peace and development that you previously took for granted. The bad news is that you will realize just how difficult it will be to bring the same conditions to the Holy Land. VERA SONGWE Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers, Random House, 2016. Reading this winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction was one of the highlights of my year. Imbolo Mbue’s story is centered on Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, who lands a dream job as chauffeur to Clark Edwards, a senior executive at a prominent investment bank. Their two worlds, and their families, become intertwined as Edwards’s privileged life unravels with the bank’s collapse. Jende and his wife Neni are confronted not only with the struggles of starting a new life in the United States but also with some harsh truths that he learns through his relationship with the Edwards. Ultimately, Jende and his wife are faced with a momentous choice about where life is more fulfilling: in New York or Cameroon. Mbue is a masterful storyteller, and her book is a page-turner. The audio version is highly recommended. At issue is not only the hot-button topic of migration but also social equity. MICHAEL R. STRAIN Hal Brands (editor), The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age, Princeton University Press, 2023. Rising geopolitical tensions and uncertainty are two of the most important developments in global macro-analysis, requiring that economists read up on matters of great-power conflict. This new volume from Princeton University Press is a reboot of a classic strategic-studies text, first written to educate Americans about the realities of strategy and conflict during World War II. With contributions from leading scholars on subjects from Clausewitz to China, the new edition brings our understanding of strategy up to date for an era in which the threat of great-power conflict looms once again. ILONA SZABÓ Itamar Vieira Junior (Translated by Johnny Lorenz), Crooked Plow, Verso (English translation), 2023. At a time when our leaders are reckoning with cascading, mutually reinforcing global challenges, it is easy to see how the day-to-day aspirations and needs of most ordinary people might fade into the background. Yet Brazilian novelist Itamar Vieira Junior’s masterful Crooked Plow is a powerful reminder that we cannot afford to leave people behind in our race to the future. That message needs to be projected into the halls of power, including in Brazil as it prepares to host the G20 in 2024 and COP30 in 2025. SINAN ÜLGEN Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things, Harper, 2023. Duke University behavioral scientist Dan Ariely’s insights are particularly relevant for all those interested in the health and robustness of the world’s democracies, especially in advance of the critical 2024 US presidential election. Not only does misinformation polarize societies, but “post-truth” politics undermine the very core of the democratic project by eroding common norms and subverting shared facts. Ariely’s book provides an innovative exploration of the appeal of misinformation, helping us to understand the psychological drivers of the post-truth phenomenon. Even more importantly, he furnishes a sophisticated intellectual foundation, grounded in the most recent behavioral studies, from which to design more effective public policies to protect the integrity of our democracies. GERNOT WAGNER Scott Patterson, Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis, Scribner, 2023. Like the corporate raider Gordon Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech in the 1987 film Wall Street, Chaos Kings is both a roadmap to riches (for some) and a powerfully crafted cautionary tale. Taking center stage is not unbridled greed per se, but rather the financial opportunities associated with volatility, uncertainty, and chaos. Scott Patterson, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, masterfully covers the gamut from financial to climate risks, showing how both the “unknowns” and the “unknowables” make climate change particularly costly and, for some, lucrative. ISABELLA M. WEBER Mark Paul, The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights, University of Chicago Press, 2023. In our troubled times, it is hard to think ahead and envision a more promising future. Yet by going back into American history, economist Mark Paul does just that. Revisiting the original promise of the New Deal, he reminds us that freedom requires a range of ambitious policies to improve the well-being of the many. That means designing an alternative economic program for a post-neoliberal world. NGAIRE WOODS Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead, Harper, 2022. This is a stunning book. A winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it takes us straight into the life of a kid born poor in Appalachia, whom the system fails at every turn. It includes a plotline that has become all too familiar: a doctor prescribes an FDA-approved opioid developed by a major pharmaceutical company that is rewarding doctors for prescribing it, even as addiction-related deaths are mounting. In the United States from 1999 to 2021, nearly 645,000 people died from opioid-related overdoses while the drugs’ manufacturers raked in outsize profits. Kingsolver offers a powerful call to rebuild a broken system, so that kids like her protagonist might someday trust it once again. US President Lyndon B. Johnson did the same thing in 1964, when he launched his “War on Poverty” in the heart of Appalachia.