白宫报告：《建立弹性供应链、振兴美国制造业和促进广泛增长》，聚焦四大供应链

译者按：

6月份，拜登政府发布供应链百日评估报告。报告由四个部门联合撰写，它们分别是商务部、能源部、国防部和卫生与公众服务部，聚焦于四大领域：半导体、大容量电池、关键矿物质和药品。虽然报告看起来是“就事论事”，并不针对中国，但由于中美经济相互依赖度较高，也很难离开中国谈美国的供应链安全问题。所以，每个章节几乎都提到了中国。本文并非报告原文，而是新经济思想研究所的一篇评论文章，作者为詹姆斯·加尔布雷斯（James K. Galbraith）。

Contrary to rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. has an economic interest in trade and peace with China

与民主党和共和党的言论相反，美国在与中国开展贸易以及保持和平关系中获得了经济利益

In January 2013, the Obama White House released a White Paper on “National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security: Implementation Update.” It was a short document, only 22 pages, almost wholly focused on the security of transport – of ships, air freight, the mails – against terrorism and other threats. What traveled through the supply chain,and from where, does not appear to have been a major concern.

2013年1月，奥巴马政府发布了一份名为《全球供应链安全的国家战略：实施情况更新》的白皮书。这是一份简短的文件，只有22页，几乎完全集中在运输安全——船舶、空运、邮件——反对恐怖主义和其他威胁上面。供应链上的内容，它们从哪儿来，似乎不是一个主要的关注点。

In June 2021, the Biden White House published a “ 100-day review” entitled “Building Resilient Supply Chains, Revitalizing American Manufacturing and Fostering Broad-based Growth.” It is focused on a very different concept of what the “supply chain” is; the term now encompasses the entire spectrum of upstream production. The Biden review takes these up in four areas: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, critical minerals, and pharmaceuticals.

2021年6月，拜登政府发表了题为《建立弹性供应链、振兴美国制造业和促进广泛增长》的“百日评估”报告。它的重点完全不一样，即何为“供应链”；这个术语包括整个上游。这篇报告聚焦于四大领域：半导体、大容量电池、关键矿物以及药品。

One might ask, why these four areas and not others? There is no clear answer, and it may be that choice was mainly bureaucratic.The review was compiled from separate reports by four cabinet departments: Commerce, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services. Had the Department of Agriculture been asked, or the Department of Transportation, one might have gotten different choices. Petroleum comes to mind. Or natural rubber – the linchpin of World War II in the Pacific.

人们可能会问，为什么是这四个领域，而不是其他领域？并没有明确的答案，这主要与不同政府部门的关切有关。该报告由四个内阁部门（商务部、能源部、国防部和卫生与公众服务部）的独立报告汇编而成的。如果由农业部或交通部来编写，报告内容可能会有差异。我想到了石油，或者天然橡胶——二战中太平洋地区的关键材料。

If there is an Ariadne’s thread to these four areas,it is the trading and competitive relationship with China. The reports do not focus solely on China and give what is largely a fair-minded and wide-ranging assessment of vulnerabilities in each sector. For the reader not previously immersed in the structures of semiconductor production or the technology of electrical storage, this document, at 250 pages, is a mine of information. But China lurks in each section, sometimes looming large, in other places only inthe background.

如果说这四个领域有一条“阿里阿德尼之线”，那就是与中国的贸易和竞争关系。当然，报告并不针对中国，而是对每个领域的薄弱之处进行了客观的和广泛的评估。对于之前没有深入了解过半导体生产结构或电力存储技术的读者来说，这份长达250页的文件是一座信息宝库。每一部分中都有中国的影子，有时隐约可见，在有些地方只作为大背景。

The global semiconductor industry is here described in fascinating detail. It is a paragon of extreme specialization, relentless technological improvement, economies of scale, and global division of labor. US firms dominate in semiconductor design and integrated production; Japan produces the wafers; Taiwan and (to a much smaller degree) South Korea dohigh-end fabrication in “contract foundries,” while China handles a substantial share of low-end chips and of “packaging” – a term that covers the placing of chips into circuit boards including, of course, the assembly of smart phones.American-based production is only 12 percent of the world’s capacity, roughly athird of what it was in the 1990s.

报告对全球半导体行业进行了详尽描述。它是高度专业化、持续的技术改进、规模经济和全球劳动分工的典范。美国公司在半导体设计和集成生产线方面占主导地位；日本生产晶圆；中国台湾和（在较小的程度上）韩国在“合同铸造厂”上进行高端制造；中国处理相当份额的低端芯片和“组装”——这个术语包括将芯片放入电路板，当然也包括智能手机的组装。美国的生产只占世界产能的12%，大约是20世纪90年代的三分之一。

To characterize broadly, the semiconductor supply chain is a network of unique nodes, in which a given firm has one upstream supplier for many major components and perhaps just one downstream customer,creating a web of bilateral monopolies operating in extreme interdependence.Thus a breakdown anywhere along the line can disrupt the entire system. This is, by the way, very much the classic problem of Soviet-style industrial structure, designed to maximize efficiency at each node (in the Soviet case, amatter of scale), but fragile as events in the early 1990s showed.

从广义上讲，半导体供应链是一个由独特节点组成的网络，在这个网络中，一个特定的公司有一个上游供应商提供许多主要部件，但也许只有一个下游客户，形成了一个双边垄断的网络，在极端相互依赖的情况下运作。因此，供应链上的任何节点出现故障都会扰乱整个系统。顺便说一下，这在很大程度上是苏联式工业结构的典型问题，旨在使每个节点的效率最大化（苏联模式是一个规模问题），但它很脆弱，正如20世纪90年代初的事件所显示的那样。

The review calls attention to several specific events that have led to recent and ongoing shortages in semiconductor supply.These include a fire in March at a facility in Japan and the freeze in Februaryin Texas which took a trio of Austin facilities off-line for up to a month. But the most important was not itself a natural event but rather the reaction toone. As Covid-19 took hold, key figures in the industry shifted capacity tohousehold applications. They failed to anticipate how quickly demand for vehicles would recover as the pandemic waned.

报告呼吁关注近期及持续导致半导体供应短缺的几个事件，包括：3月份日本一家工厂的火灾和2月份德克萨斯州的严寒天气，这使得奥斯汀的三家工厂停工长达一个月。但最重要的不是自然事件本身，而是对自然事件的反应。随着新冠疫情的爆发，该行业的厂商将产能转移到了家居应用。他们没有预料到，随着疫情的减弱，对汽车的需求会迅速恢复。

The problem is that chip production takes a lot of time; it is characterized to an extreme degree by what economists of theAustrian school call “roundaboutness.” The multiple steps (etching, doping, andso forth) are repeated “hundreds of times”; producing a single chip “can takeup to 26 weeks.” So once locked into a program, the industry has the margin ofmaneuver, roughly, of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, the automakers who have designed a hundred or more distinct chips into their newcars must sit and wait. This accounts, no doubt, in part for the surging prices of used vehicles and the current scarcity of rental cars.

问题是，芯片生产需要大量的时间；它具有奥地利学派经济学家所说的极端“迂回生产”过程。多个步骤（蚀刻、掺杂等）重复数百次；生产一个芯片“可能需要26周”。因此，一旦被锁定在一个项目上，该行业的回旋余地就像在苏伊士运河中搁浅的“长赐号”货轮那样小。与此同时，那些在新车上设计了一百个或更多不同芯片的汽车制造商必须等待。毫无疑问，这在一定程度上解释了二手车价格的飙升和目前租赁车辆的稀缺。

What then is the “China threat” to the semiconductor supply chain? The most important one is stated very plainly. China is theworld’s largest semiconductor market, both for home use and for incorporation into products sold elsewhere. The single biggest risk from Chinais not some nefarious disruption of components or materials. It is rather, a possible fall in the final demand. The review is clear and unambiguous on thispoint:

那么，半导体供应链中的“中国威胁”是什么？这是最重要的一点，报告说得很明白。中国是世界上最大的半导体市场，无论是自用，还是作为销售到其它地方的投入品来使用。来自中国的唯一最大风险不是对零部件或材料的恶意破坏。更确切地说，是来自最终需求的可能下降。在这一点上，报告有明确说明：

“US semiconductor companies… thus have the potential to be significantlyimpacted by trade restrictions between the United States and China, with major potions of their revenue at risk of long-term disruption. Based on the Chinese government’s ambitions in regard to the semiconductor industry, these revenue sources may be at risk regardless, but given that their ability to reinvest isimmediately dependent on sales to China, their long-term viability is immediately affected by actions that decrease sales.” (p. 57.)

"美国半导体公司......因此有可能受到美国和中国之间贸易摩擦的重大影响，他们的主要收入有可能被长期压制。基于中国政府在半导体行业的野心，这些收入来源可能会面临风险，但鉴于他们的再投资能力直接取决于对中国的销售，他们的长期生存能力会直接受到销量下降的影响。(第57页)

The review goes on to note that since much of the industry operates on the two banks of the Taiwan Strait, “Even a minor conflictor embargo could have immediate major disruptions to the United States and long-term implications for US supply chain resilience” (p. 57). In a WhiteHouse document, at this moment of heated China-bashing, this is a welcome realism.

报告继续指出，由于该行业的大部分业务是在中国台湾海峡两岸进行的，“即使是小的冲突或禁运，也会立即对美国产生重大干扰，并对美国供应链的弹性产生长期影响”（第57页）。在这个激烈抨击中国的时刻，白宫文件是一个受欢迎的现实主义报告。

With large-capacity batteries, the principal supply-chain issue is not so much a science-driven matter of design and engineering as it is access to key materials, most notably nickel, graphite,cobalt, and lithium. With these materials, it appears reserves are not particularly scarce, although in the case of cobalt they are concentrated inthe Democratic Republic of Congo, where mining conditions are tactfullydescribed as being “outside of international practice.” The review notes that China’s advantage in materials supply results, mainly, from having invested infinding reserves on its own territory.

对于大容量电池来说，主要的供应链问题与其说是设计和工程的科学驱动问题，不如说是关键材料的获取问题，最明显的是镍、石墨、钴和锂。就这些材料而言，储备似乎并不特别稀缺，尽管就钴而言，它们集中在刚果民主共和国，那里的采矿条件被委婉地描述为“不符合国际惯例”。评论指出，中国在材料供应方面的优势主要来自于投资在自己的领土上的储备开采。

But, it turns out, industrial dominance in this area does not rest on the supply side. It lies rather in the development of theindustry itself, driven by demand for electrical storage, which is overwhelmingly in the automotive sector. China is the low-cost producer because it is the world’s largest user, consuming 40 percent of global large-capacity battery output. Europe accounts for another 40 percent, and the United Statesfor just 13 percent. Consider this: there are 425,000 electrically-powered buses in the world today. Of these, 300 are in the United States; 421,000 arein China. Perhaps oddly for a report on the supply chain, but not unreasonably under the circumstances, the recommendations in this section are relentless: the United States should work to bolster demand.

但是，事实证明，工业在这一领域的主导地位并不在于供应方面。相反，它在于行业本身的发展，由汽车行业对电力存储的需求所驱动，汽车行业对电力存储的需求占绝大多数。中国是低成本生产商，因为它的用户是世界上最大的，消费了全球大容量电池产量的40%。欧洲占另外的40%，而美国仅占13%。可以参考这个数据：目前世界上有425，000辆电动巴士，其中，300辆在美国；42.1万辆在中国。对于一份关于供应链的报告来说，也许很奇怪，但也不无道理，本节中的建议是毫不留情的：美国应该努力刺激需求。

In the report on critical materials, prepared by the Pentagon, thirty-eight minerals are listed for which US direct import dependence is above 75 percent. Of these, China is a top supplier in eighteen cases. And why is that? Largely, as the report states, because the growth in China’s own demand for these materials has made it profitable for China toinvest in the supply chain, hence to become the high-volume, low-cost producer, to whom the world turns.

在五角大楼编写的关于关键材料的报告中，列出了38种美国直接进口依赖度超过75%的矿物质。其中，中国是18种材料的首要供应商。这是为什么呢？如报告所述，主要是因为中国自身对这些材料的需求的增长，使得中国在供应链上的投资有利可图，从而成为大批量、低成本的生产商，世界都向其看齐。

The Defense Department is naturally concerned with the possible consequences of conflict, and so with the possibility that access to materials might be lost, especially where there is only one source ofsupply. This is particularly true in the case of “rare earths” – a grab-bag of exotic minerals – where China had 85 percent of the global market as of 2014 – even though the entire Chinese workforce in the mining of rare earths consistsof only 4,000 souls, with an additional 40,000 in smelting. Perhaps understandably, not even the Pentagon has a good answer to this problem, apart from conservation, recycling, stockpiling, and being prepared to divert from routine to essential uses in an emergency. The review laments the decline of mining expertise emerging from US university systems, where educational programs have folded as mines have disappeared. But it is hard to see why students would pursue degrees, or universities provide them, in fields for which jobs no longer exist.

国防部自然关注冲突可能带来的后果，因此关注可能失去获得材料的机会，特别是在只有一个供应来源的情况下。“稀土”尤其如此——这是一种奇特的矿物——截至2014年，中国拥有全球市场的85%——尽管整个中国开采稀土的劳动力只有4000人，另外还有4万人从事冶炼。也许可以理解的是，除了保护、回收、储存以及准备在紧急情况下从常规用途转为必要用途之外，五角大楼都无法很好的解决这一问题。该报告对美国大学系统中出现的采矿专业知识的衰退表示遗憾，在这些大学中，随着矿场的消失，教育项目也随之关闭。但很难说为什么学生要在工作岗位不再存在的情况下追求学位，或者大学提供学位。

With pharmaceuticals, the problem is not of scarcity but of basic economics. The supply chain moved to India because costs are lowas befits the low-price, low-margin, high-volume business of generic drug manufacture. Supply chain resilience would thus be a matter of maintaining a“virtual” stockpile, consisting of manufacturing equipment and precursor chemicals, to be held in reserve in case of emergencies. It is important tonote that to be useful, the reserve capacity would have to be kept idle –otherwise it adds no layer of safety in the event of a disruption. The reviewis realistic about the prospects for this: the scale and complexity of the sector, together with the unpredictability of future biological threats, makesit impractical to maintain large reserves in all areas. In an open globalmarket economy, drugs will be bought from where they are cheapest to produce.

对于药品来说，问题不在于稀缺性，而在于经济性。供应链转移到印度是因为成本低，这与低价格、低利润、高产量的非专利药品生产业务相匹配。因此，供应链的弹性依赖于“虚拟”库存，包括制造设备和易制毒化学品，以备紧急情况下的可用储备。值得注意的是，为了发挥作用，储备产能必须保持闲置——否则在发生中断的情况下，它不会增加安全垫。报告对这一前景持实用主义态度：该部门的规模和复杂性，以及未来生物威胁的不可预测性，使得在所有领域保持大量储备是不现实的。在一个开放的全球市场经济中，药品将从生产成本最低的地方购买。

In each area, the Review is critical of Chinese practices, which are said to consist of large-scale, “top-down,”“market-distorting,” public investments, subsidies to Chinese companies, state-sponsored industrial rationalization, and in the case of electric vehicles, large subsidies to consumers to spur demand. Thus we read: “The Chinese Government has focused on capturing discrete strategic and criticalmaterial markets as a matter of state policy.” (p. 174). Examples given arethat in 2002 China “prohibited foreign investors from establishing rare earthmining enterprises in China” and in 2014 consolidated the business in the handsof a “handful of national champions.” Also, back in 1985, China had establisheda VAT rebate for rare-earth exports, “which contributed to the erosion and theelimination of US production in the global market.”

在每一个领域，报告都对中国的做法提出了批评，这些做法包括大规模、“自上而下”、“扭曲市场”的公共投资，对中国公司的补贴，国家支持工业的合理性，以及在电动汽车方面，对消费者提供大量补贴以刺激需求。因此，我们看到：“中国政府的政策重点是占领分散的战略和关键的物资市场。”(第174页)所举的例子是，2002年，中国“禁止外国投资者在中国建立稀土开采企业”，并在2014年将该业务整合到“少数国家龙头企业”的手中。另外，早在1985年，中国就为稀土出口设立了增值税退税，“这导致美国生产在全球市场中被侵蚀和淘汰”。

In this and other instances throughout the Review,the deplorable practices of state planning and national development strategiesundertaken by China are, within a few pages, pretty much exactly what theauthors recommend for the United States. (The DoD recommendations on criticalmaterials are an exception here, addressing among other things recycling, humanrights issues, and environmental concerns, even though these are perhapssomewhat tangential to supply-chain issues per se.) Thus onlithium-ion batteries, we read: “As part of the American Jobs Plan, PresidentJoe Biden has called for transformative investments to spur this demand,including $100 billion in incentives to encourage US consumers to transition toEVs” (p. 134). Similarly on semiconductors: “Consistent with the American JobsPlan proposals, federal incentives to build or expand semiconductor facilitiesare necessary to counter the significant subsidies provided by foreign alliesand competitors.” (p. 76). How an “incentive” differs from the Chinese practiceof “subsidies” is not clearly explained. Nor does the review admit that exportrebates on VAT are standard practice everywhere.

（悖论之处在于）在这一点上，以及在其他情形中，中国所采取的国家规划和国家发展战略的行为，几乎也是作者对美国的建议。（国防部关于关键材料的建议是一个例外，其中涉及到回收、人权问题和环境问题，尽管这些问题可能与供应链问题本身有一些联系）因此，关于锂电池，“作为美国就业计划的一部分，拜登总统呼吁进行变革性投资以刺激这一需求，包括提供1，000亿美元的激励措施以鼓励美国消费者过渡到电动汽车”（第134页）。在半导体方面也是如此：“与美国就业计划的建议相一致，联邦激励措施中关于建立或扩大半导体设施的提议是必要的，以对抗外国盟友和竞争对手提供的大量补贴”。(第76页)“激励”与中国的“补贴”的做法有何不同，报告并没有明确解释。报告中也没有承认增值税的出口退税是各地的标准做法。

Still, from a broad reading and fair appraisal ofthis genuinely excellent document, two major conclusions may be drawn. Thefirst is that the Chinese advantage – which is by no means absolute in allareas – stems from a pragmatic program of economic development, includinginfrastructure and human resources, in a vast country able to take advantage ofa scale of production and internal market impossible anywhere else. This leadsto lower costs across a wide range of industrial and engineering capacities,bolstered by being embedded (as the Review does not point out) in a systemoriented toward social stability and steady growth rather than short-termprofitability and financial contracts. The Chinese edge – similar to India’s inpharmaceuticals but much more broadly based – is the product of the success ofChina’s development approach, especially in the post-Mao era, but with rootsthat go back to the 1949 revolution, to the creation of the People’s Republicand to the restoration of a unitary Chinese state with full control over thenation’s land and resources. This is a fact of life and not an artifact ofruses or dirty dealing.

不过，从对这份极其优秀的文件的广泛阅读和公正评价中，我们可以得出两个主要结论。第一个结论是，中国的优势——在所有领域都不是绝对的——来自于一个务实的经济发展计划，包括基础设施和人力资源，在一个幅员广阔的国家，能够利用其他地方不具备的生产规模和内部市场。这使得工业和工程成本的普遍降低，并通过嵌入（正如《报告》没有指出的那样）一个以社会稳定和稳定增长、而不是短期盈利和金融合同为导向的体制而得到支持。该优势——类似于印度在制药方面的优势，但基础更广泛——是“中国模式”取得成功的关键，尤其是在后毛泽东时代，但其根源可以追溯到1949年的革命，追溯到中华人民共和国的建立，追溯到对国家土地和资源有完全控制权的大一统国家的恢复。这是无法改变的事实，而不是诡计或肮脏交易的产物。

The second key conclusion is that in criticalsectors, in the world we inhabit and from which we cannot escape, US-Chinainterdependence is indefeasible. Rare earths are a minor example, barring newdiscoveries in other places. Semiconductors are a major one: without theChinese market, the American firms that presently dominate the high-end designprocesses would collapse. Bringing manufacturing back to the US, we learn,would come primarily at the expense of allies, including Japan and South Koreaas well as, especially, Taiwan. It is hard to see why even the most aggressiveChina hawk would favor stripping Taiwan of its chip foundries – but even doingthat would hardly lessen the dependence of the semiconductor ecosystem on the Chinesemarket.

第二个关键结论是，在我们所居住的、我们无法逃避的世界的关键领域，美中的相互依存关系是不可动摇的。稀土是一个小例子，除非在其他地方有新发现。半导体是一个重要的例子：如果没有中国市场，目前在高端设计过程中占主导地位的美国公司将崩溃。我们了解到，将制造业带回美国，将主要以牺牲盟友为代价，包括日本和韩国，特别是台湾。很难理解，为什么即使是最激进的中国鹰派也会支持剥离台湾的芯片代工商——但即使这样做也很难减少半导体生态系统对中国市场的依赖。

So we come to a truly remarkable third conclusion,no less powerful for having been left unstated. It builds on the fact that theintegration of the global economy cannot be undone. The division of labor –hence productivity, living standards, and the advance of technologies – islimited by the extent of the market, as Adam Smith wrote in The Wealthof Nations back in 1776. China is a now-developed country with abouttwenty percent of the human population; its advantages are stability and scale,almost exactly as was true in the 18^th century. Theseadvantages cannot now be taken away without destroying the world as it is.

因此，我们得出了真正令人瞩目的第三个结论，这个结论并不会因为未被说明而显得无力。正如亚当·斯密(Adam Smith)在1776年的《国富论》(The Wealth of Nations)中所写的那样，劳动分工——即生产力、生活水平和技术进步——受到市场范围的限制。中国是一个发达国家，拥有占全人类20%的人口；它的优势是稳定和规模，几乎与18世纪的情况完全一样。这些优势现在无法在不破坏世界现状的情况下被夺走。

To be sure, the Chinese still, in many importantadvanced areas, draw from and depend on the United States. Certainly, the UScan slow the inroads of Chinese firms in some cases, and certainly the US canfoster, as this report recommends, its own advantages in new sectors bymaintaining and expanding its research and development base. Certainly, thereare many things to be done in the United States to meet urgent environmental,public health, and critical social goals.

可以肯定的是，在许多重要的先进领域，中国人仍然会借鉴和依赖美国。当然，美国可以在某些情况下减缓中国公司的发展，正如本报告所建议的那样，美国可以通过保持和扩大其研究和开发基础来加强其在新领域的自身优势。当然，在美国有许多事情要做，以满足紧迫的环境、公共卫生和关键社会目标。

But the US position, as an economy with onlyone-fourth the population, equally now depends on the Chinese market, and ondownstream Chinese firms supplying applications to the world. While precautionsagainst natural disasters and pandemics can be taken – up to a point – thecentral unstated message of this 100-day Review is that the greatest risk tothe supply chain, in each of the four areas, is disruption of normal traderelations with China. In short, as an objective economic matter, we learn here,the United States has an overwhelming interest in peace. 

但是，美国作为一个只有中国四分之一人口的经济体，现在同样依赖中国市场，以及向世界提供产品的中国下游企业。尽管在一定程度上可以采取预防自然灾害和流行病的措施，但这份百日评估报告未明示的核心信息是，在上述四个领域中，供应链面临的最大风险是与中国的正常贸易关系受到破坏。简而言之，我们在这里了解到，作为一个客观的经济问题，和平对美国利益有着压倒性的攸关性。