JASON FURMAN2025年8月1日 Sam Whitney/The New York TimesWay back in April, when President Trump unveiled his plans for steep tariffs against the United States’ trading partners, some Democrats were publicly gleeful about what they thought was the beginning of a Trump recession. Some of his supporters were privately worried about the same thing.4月，当特朗普总统宣布对美国贸易伙伴征收高额关税的计划时，一些民主党人公开幸灾乐祸，认为那将是特朗普带来的经济衰退的开始。而他的一些支持者私下里也对此忧心忡忡。That sure seems like a long time ago now. Nearly four months later, with the economy still largely intact, the poles are reversed: Mr. Trump’s camp is publicly gleeful, while some Democrats are secretly disappointed. Financial markets have been on the same roller coaster.现在看来恍如隔世。近四个月后，经济大体完好无损，双方立场已然逆转：特朗普阵营公开庆贺，民主党人暗自失望。金融市场也经历了同样的过山车般的波动。So were the models wrong? Was the concern misplaced? Should the economists who sounded the alarm — the same people who got so many high-profile predictions wrong in recent years — be sitting down to eat another course of humble pie? Well, it’s not that simple.那么，是经济模型错了吗？担忧纯属多余？那些敲响警钟的经济学家——近年屡屡做出重大误判的同一批人——是否该再吃一堑？嗯，事情远非如此简单。Just as the models predicted, growth has indeed slowed, and inflation has risen. If you look at the first half of the year as a whole, there is more than a hint of stagflation, that dreaded combination of slow growth and inflation. In fact, this chart shows that reality has fallen short of the predictions that economists made late last year, when Mr. Trump inherited an economy that was on track for continued solid growth and diminishing inflation.正如模型预测的那样，经济增长确实放缓了，通胀已然抬头。纵观上半年经济，滞胀迹象清晰可见，这种低增长与通胀的致命组合令人忧心。这张图表显示现实表现未达经济学家去年末的预测值，当时特朗普接手的是一个正朝着持续稳健增长和通胀回落方向发展的经济。Not all of the slower growth and higher inflation is the result of tariffs. Many factors are at play, including substantial reductions in immigration. But the latest forecasts from the Yale Budget Lab (where I have an advisory role), like many other such analyses, see a 0.5-percentage-point reduction in growth this year and a gross domestic product that is persistently 0.4 percent lower than it would have been without the tariffs.增长放缓与通胀加剧并非全拜关税所赐。它们是诸多因素共同作用的结果，包括移民锐减。耶鲁预算实验室（笔者在这里任顾问）的最新预测与许多其他此类分析一样，认为今年的经济增长将减少0.5个百分点，国内生产总值将持续比无关税情况低0.4个百分点。Note the “persistently.”注意“持续”二字。The annual growth numbers will probably creep their way back up close to normal, but even if that happens, the G.D.P. will still lag what it would have been — just like a runner who gets back up to speed after a stumble but never regains her position. Even if the current slowdown ends by next year, the United States will be about half a percentage point behind where it would be if the slowdown hadn’t happened in the first place.年增长率或逐步回归常态，但即便如此，GDP总量仍将滞后于原本应有的水平——就像一个跌倒后重新加速却永失领先身位的跑者。即便当前放缓态势于明年终结，美国经济总量仍将比未受冲击的情况低约0.5个百分点。Half a percentage point may not sound like much, but in an economy as huge as the United States’, it amounts to a loss of about $150 billion. That’s the equivalent of every household in America taking around $1,000 and lighting it on fire — then doing it again every year. Forever.0.5%看似微小，但在美国这样的经济体量下则意味着约1500亿美元损失。这相当于全美家庭每年拿出约1000美元并将其付之一炬，而且年年如此。永无止境。Imagine if a president ordered Americans to do that. It would be remembered for decades as one of the largest unforced economic errors in U.S. history. But that’s the practical effect of these policies. Still, for all that waste, it’s a far cry from some of the dire warnings about recessions, economic crises and stock market collapses that we heard in April. Why?能想象一个总统会命令美国人这样做吗？在未来几十年里这都将是美国历史上最大的非受迫性失误之一。然而，尽管损失巨大，4月那些关于衰退、经济危机和股市崩溃的骇人警告与现实仍相去甚远。原因何在？In part it’s because economists, including me, suffer from tariff derangement syndrome. We find ourselves disproportionately worked up every time they are increased. Business leaders and financial markets can suffer a touch of this at times, too. Another factor is that Mr. Trump pulled back from the most consequential tariff, 145 percent on products from China, which would have been like an immediate trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies, and has pared back some of his tariff increases on key economies like the European Union and Japan.部分原因在于，包括我在内的经济学家都患有“关税错乱综合征”。每当关税增加时，我们都会过度反应。商界领袖和金融市场有时亦不能幸免。另一个因素是，特朗普撤回了了最具杀伤力的关税：对中国产品加征145%的关税——几乎等同于在世界两大经济体之间立即实行贸易禁运，而且他也降低了对欧盟和日本等主要经济体的加税幅度。But even at the height of tariff mania I thought a recession was unlikely, for a few simple reasons. First, imported goods account for only 11 percent of the U.S. G.D.P. Most of the economy is made up of sectors like health, education and other services that are not hugely affected by tariffs. In addition, the U.S. economy has extraordinary strength and momentum, which gave us some of the highest growth rates of any advanced economy both before Covid (in Mr. Trump’s first term) and after the start of the pandemic (during Joe Biden’s term). The artificial intelligence boom, including data center construction, is helping, too.但即便关税狂热巅峰时期，我也认为衰退可能性微乎其微。原因很简单。首先，进口商品仅占美国GDP的11%。经济主体由医疗、教育及其他受关税影响有限的服务业构成。此外，美国经济具备非凡的实力与势头，使我们在新冠疫情前（特朗普首个任期）和疫情初期（拜登任期）均保持发达经济体最高增速。人工智能热潮及数据中心建设亦形成支撑。The story is a little different when it comes to inflation. Here we are starting to see some direct effects, with prices on appliances, toys and computers rising as one would expect them to. This is why we have seen the increase in inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices. Consumers, however, are less bothered because other prices have fallen — most notably for gasoline, where, paradoxically, tariffs have weakened the global economy and thus put downward pressure on oil prices. Other factors, like businesses’ surging imports at the beginning of the year to get ahead of the tariffs, have also helped to restrain inflation but will not continue to do so for much longer. Another factor is that many businesses have been eating the tariff increases to avoid enraging consumers or Mr. Trump, but that is something they can do for only so long; eventually they will have to raise prices if they want to avoid continued losses and bankruptcy.通胀情况则略有不同。此处我们开始看到了直接影响：家电、玩具和电脑价格正如预期般上涨。这就是剔除波动性食品能源价格后通胀攀升的原因。但消费者并未过度困扰，因其他价格出现下跌——最显著的是油价，吊诡的是，关税削弱了全球经济，从而对油价施加了下行压力。其他因素，如年初企业为赶在关税前而激增的进口也帮助抑制了通胀，但这种效果不会持续太久。另一因素是，众多企业为安抚消费者及特朗普而自行消化关税成本，但这种情况也只能维持一段时间，若想避免持续亏损和破产，它们最终将不得不提高价格。Finally, there is the stock market, which is unfazed and setting records. I do not have a particularly tidy explanation except to note that the stock market reflects many factors other than the economy, including rational ones like the potential for A.I. and irrational ones like bubbles. I long ago gave up trying to understand the daily ups and downs of the market and just buy and hold, no matter how turbulent the events around me.最后是丝毫不为所动地创下新高的股市。对此我没有特别简洁的解释，只能指出股市反映的因素除了经济之外还有很多，包括像人工智能潜力这样理性的因素，以及像泡沫这样非理性的因素。我早就放弃了试图理解市场每日涨跌的努力，任凭周遭风雨坚持长期持有。It is still early days, and things could get worse as more tariffs kick in and all the effects work their way through the economy. There is much that economists and macroeconomic models are uncertain about, the most important being the consequences of uncertainty itself. When economists and business leaders were warning about recession, it wasn’t just because of what tariffs did to the $3 trillion of our economy that was imports. It was more because of what record levels of economic policy uncertainty would do to the other $26 trillion, by stymieing investment decisions and consumer spending. Right now it looks as if all that uncertainty was closer to a momentary panic and background noise than something of lasting consequence. I hope it stays that way, but we will see.关税全面生效与经济效应显现仍需时日，形势可能还会恶化。经济学家与宏观模型尚存诸多不确定，最关键在于“不确定性”本身的连锁反应。当初经济学家与商界领袖预警衰退时，不仅因关税冲击3万亿美元进口经济部门，更因创纪录的经济政策不确定性将阻碍26万亿美元经济体的投资决策和消费者支出。目前看来，所有这些不确定性更像是一时的恐慌和背景噪音，而不是具有持久影响的东西。我希望情况能这样保持下去，但需要拭目以待。The United States is lucky. We have tremendous natural resources, a broad and skilled work force, the world’s best universities and cutting-edge technology companies, and we issue what is the closest thing to a global currency. This gives us a lot of resilience in the face of even very large-scale policy shocks and mistakes. No political movements in, say, Singapore or Sweden would ever dream of completely walling their countries off from the rest of the world; they understand that absent global trade, they could not possibly make the wide range of goods and services that their citizens want, let alone support the well-paying export jobs that enable them to enjoy a good standard of living. It is more imaginable to Americans that we could survive as an autarky, which is how we have been able to undertake this sharp turn in policy. But the combination of restrictions on trade, immigration, research and innovation will all add up to real money.美国很幸运。我们拥有丰富的自然资源，具有多元、高素质的劳动力，世界顶尖的学府，以及尖端科技公司，而且我们发行的货币几乎就是全球通用货币。这赋予我们抵御重大政策冲击和错误的韧性。举例来说，在新加坡或瑞典这样的国家，任何政治运动都不会梦想着将自己国家与世界其他地方完全隔绝；他们深知若失去全球贸易，他们既无法生产国民所需的丰富商品和服务，更无力维持带来高生活水准的高薪出口岗位。而自给自足对美国人来说没那么遥远，这也是我们能够在政策上采取如此急剧转向的原因所在。但贸易、移民、科研与创新等多方面的限制加在一起，最终都会转化为真金白银的损失。Jason Furman是观点文章撰稿人，曾于2013年至2017年担任白宫经济顾问委员会主席。翻译：杜然点击查看本文英文版。