“An educated consumer,” the New York haberdasher Sy Syms used to boast in his television commercials, “is our best customer.” The same is not true of trade pacts. Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement 20 years ago, voters have come to understand them better and like them less. True, 54 per cent of Americans see trade as an “opportunity for growth”, according to a recent Gallup poll. But 38 per cent see it as a “threat to the economy”, and they are dug in. Many blame globalisation for the 60,000 plants closed, by some estimates, and the 5m manufacturing jobs lost since Nafta was passed. The White House – negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU and the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 12 nations – finds itself failing on both fronts.

“受过教育的消费者是我们的理想客户”，纽约男子服饰经销商Sy Syms曾经在电视广告中这样标榜道。这一点对于贸易协议来说并不成立。因为20年前随着《北美自由贸易协定》(NAFTA)的通过，投票人对于贸易协议的了解程度日渐加深，好感度却越来越低。盖洛普(Gallup)近期进行的一项民调显示，54%的美国人认为贸易是一种“促进增长的机遇”，但有38%的人则认为贸易是一种“对经济的威胁”，而且他们对此深信不疑。据估计，自《北美自由贸易协定》通过以来，美国共有6万家工厂关闭，500万个制造业工作岗位消失，很多人将此归咎为全球化的影响。目前，白宫一方面在与欧盟就《跨大西洋贸易和投资伙伴关系协定》(TTIP)进行谈判，另一方面则在和12个国家商谈《跨太平洋战略经济伙伴关系协定》(TPP)。但在这两个方面，白宫取得的进展均不尽人意。

Nafta was oversold 20 years ago. It has generated much economic activity but many of its specific promises proved false. It did not stabilise the US trade balance; instead it led to sizeable trade deficits. It did not produce a Mexican prosperity widespread enough to hold down migration to the US; instead it weakened the rural Mexican economy and drove immigration higher. Other trade deals have brought unpleasant surprises, too. Since a pact with South Korea came into force in 2012, US exports there have fallen and the bilateral trade deficit is up more than 50 per cent. Barack Obama’s trade negotiators boast that their “21st century” agreements will avoid some of Nafta’s economic pitfalls. The problem is that the criticism of those agreements is 21st century as well.

《北美自由贸易协定》所能带来的益处在20年前被吹嘘过头了。它确实催生了不少经济活动，但未能兑现很多具体承诺。该协定未能稳定美国的贸易平衡，正相反，它导致了大规模的贸易逆差。该协定不仅未使墨西哥出现覆盖范围足够广的经济繁荣，以抑制墨西哥向美国的移民潮，正相反，它使墨西哥的农村经济更加虚弱，并使移民规模进一步扩大。其它贸易协议也导致了令人不快的意外后果。自从美国与韩国的贸易协定自2012年生效以来，美国对韩出口持续下降，双边贸易赤字升幅超过50%。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)的贸易谈判代表宣称，他们所推动的“二十一世纪”新型贸易协定能够避免《北美自由贸易协定》的某些经济陷阱。问题在于这些协定所面对的同样是二十一世纪的新型批评。

Today’s trade deals are more about setting standards and ground rules than about removing tariffs and quotas – which, except for food and clothing, are already quite low in the US. The new pacts get under the skin of the those who distrust global capitalism, just as the old pacts did. But they also provoke unwonted unease among market libertarians. Thus, Lori Wallach of the anti-Nafta group Public Citizen was one of the heroes of the 1999 Seattle street protests against the World Trade Organisation, but her sophisticated, left-leaning arguments against granting “fast-track” authority to today’s US trade negotiators might also convince the constitutional literalists who inhabit the various Tea Party groups.

如今的贸易协议更多是设定标准和基本原则，而非取消关税和配额——除了食品和服装之外，美国其它商品的关税水平已经很低了。新的贸易协定和过往协议一样，让那些不信任全球资本主义的人感到不快。但它们在市场自由主义者中间也激起了罕见的不安情绪。因此，洛瑞•沃勒克(Lori Wallach)作为反对《北美自由贸易协定》的“公民组织”(Public Citizen)成员，在1999年西雅图街头针对世贸组织(WTO)的抗议活动中成为了英雄。但她世故老练、反对向如今的美国贸易谈判代表授予“快速道”(fast-track)权限的左倾言论或许同样使宪法自由主义者们认定，各种各样的茶党(Tea Party)组织究竟是由什么样的人组成的。

As Ms Wallach said in a recent television appearance, the new-generation pacts are only partly about trade. The main thing such pacts do is to improve the standing of corporations against the governments that would regulate them domestically. So-called “investor-state dispute settlement”, a Nafta innovation, elevates a certain expected regulatory environment to the level of a right. Companies can sue countries before an ad hoc panel over the negative impact of laws passed in their parliaments. (Labour groups and non-governmental organisations cannot.) Under a similar set of arbitration rules the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall is seeking €3.7bn from Germany over its plans to phase out nuclear power. Another problem: members of the US Congress and of the German Bundestag have complained of getting less access to details of trade legislation than lobbyists do. In the US, advice about legislative language is being given by complex “advisory committees”, many of them defending industry niches.

沃勒克最近在电视上露面时表示，新一代贸易协定中只有部分内容跟贸易有关。这些协定的主要作用在于，提升企业面对有权在国内市场上对其实施监管的政府时的地位。《北美自由贸易协定》的一项创新，所谓的“投资人与东道国间的争端解决机制”，将某些监管环境从预期之内提升到了应有水平。企业可以就国家议会通过的法律产生的负面影响，向一个特设委员会起诉该国政府。（而劳工组织以及非政府组织则无权这么做。）按照一套类似的仲裁规则，瑞典能源巨头大瀑布电力公司(Vattenfall)正在就德国逐渐停用核能的计划向德国政府索要37亿欧元赔偿金。另一个问题是：美国国会以及德国联邦议院(Bundestag)的议员已经开始抱怨，他们所掌握的贸易立法详细信息还没有游说组织多。在美国，对于立法语言的建议来自结构复杂的“顾问委员会”，而委员会中的很多人都在维护行业的市场地位。

The French political philosopher Pierre Manent gave an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro in January in which he noted that the old sociological case for free trade (that local manufacturers with captive markets get lazy) no longer applies. Today there is a better sociological case against free trade (that distant manufacturers with access to cheap labour get lazy). In such a world, the “natural” constituency of pro-business and free-market conservatives that people always assume will materialise for TTIP or TPP may not exist. Counting votes for any trade bill looks as unpredictable as last September’s presidential request for authorisation to use force in Syria. Mr Obama needed hundreds of votes to prevail, and withdrew when it became clear he could muster only a few dozen.

今年1月，法国政治哲学家皮埃尔•马南在接受《费加罗报》(Le Figaro)采访时指出，支持自由贸易的传统社会学理由（本地制造企业在封闭市场中日趋懒惰）已经不再适用。如今，反对自由贸易的社会学理论（有能力享受廉价劳动力资源的海外制造商将日趋懒惰）更有说服力。在这个世界中，对于重商主义以及自由市场保守主义者的天然支持可能并不存在，虽然人们总以为这种支持将在TTIP或者TPP谈判中自动出现。任何贸易法案的投票统计过程看起来都充满不确定性，就跟去年九月总统要求国会授权对叙利亚使用武力的投票一样。奥巴马需要争取到数百张选票才能成功，但在实际情况表明他只能得到数十张选票后，他撤回了提案。

The Economist magazine recently taunted the president with the observation that failure in trade legislation will be “a signal that America is giving up its role as defender of an open global economy in the same way that Mr Obama has retreated in foreign policy”. One might add that the two retreats are being carried out on the same, perfectly reasonable grounds. The status quo is growing unpopular domestically, and harder to sustain. The economic case for free trade remains, in many instances, a strong one. Protectionism can be economically costly. But agreements to open up markets can be politically costly. It may be a while before we see another.

《经济学家》(Economist)杂志不久前嘲笑奥巴马称，贸易立法的失败将成为“一个信号，标志美国正在放弃自身作为全球开放经济捍卫者的角色，这和奥巴马在外交政策领域的败退如出一辙”。有人或许会补充称，这两方面的避退都是基于同样的、完全合理的立场做出的。国内的现状正变得越来越不得人心，并且越来越难以维持。支持自由贸易的经济理由仍然存在，并且在很多情况下具有较强说服力。实行贸易保护主义可能要付出很高的经济代价。但开放市场的协议在政治上同样代价不菲。我们可能需要过一段时间才能看到一项新的贸易协议。