大约每月一次，我会打开谷歌新闻，输入“衰退”这一个词，看看会出现什么。大多数时候，标题都令人安心：“尽管经济下行，专家并不认为衰退即将到来”——诸如此类。
About once a month, I go to Google News and type in the single word “recession” just to see what comes up. Most of the time, the headlines are reassuring: “Despite downturn, experts don’t see recession coming”—that sort of thing.
但周日，标题的基调略有不同。“世界是否正面临股市崩盘和衰退？五个令人不安的信号。”“美联储刚刚加息，衰退紧随其后。”“亿万富翁投资者莱昂·库珀曼预计2027年将出现衰退，股市将下跌。”“传奇经济学家加里·希林表示，消费信号指向未来12个月内将出现衰退。”等等。
Sunday, the headlines read a little differently. “Is the World Staring at a Big Stock Market Crash—and Recession? 5 Uneasy Signs.”“The Fed Just Raised Interest Rates. Recession Is Next.”“Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman sees a recession in 2027 and a stock drop ahead.”“Legendary economist Gary Shilling says consumer signals point to a recession in the next 12 months.”And so on.
这仍然是此类人士中的少数观点。但我对此关注得足够多，足以告诉你，这是一种转变。库珀曼曾是高盛集团的首席执行官，他援引油价数据，认为油价将在一段时间内维持高位。希林则指出，消费者情绪紧张——零售支出和消费者信心指数大幅下滑。
This is still the minority view among such people. But I follow all this enough to be able to tell you that this is a shift. Cooperman, a former Goldman Sachs CEO, cites oil prices that look like they’ll stay elevated for a while. Shilling notes that consumers are nervous—retail spending and consumer confidence are way down.
我想，不同的人会引用不同的理由，但这一切背后真正的原因只有一个，那就是唐纳德·J·特朗普。
Different people will cite different reasons, I suppose, but there’s really only one reason for all this, and his name is Donald J. Trump.
他做出的每一个决定都是错误的，并使局势更加恶化。以关税为例。税务基金会一直在追踪特朗普承诺将“解放”我们的关税的经济影响。简短的回答是？它们是一场灾难。2025年，这些关税使美国家庭的平均税负增加了1000美元，并将使长期国内生产总值减少0.4%，还有更多负面影响。
Every decision he makes is the wrong one and makes the situation worse. Take the tariffs. The Tax Foundation keeps track of the economic impact of the tariffs Trump promised would “liberate” us. Short answer? They’ve been a disaster. They increased taxes on the average American household by $1,000 in 2025, will reduce long-run gross domestic product by 0.4 percent, and more.
让我们来看看与伊朗的战争。每个人都知道这场冲突对汽油价格、化肥价格和贸易造成了什么影响。新的是，上周末，特朗普拒绝了伊朗重返谈判桌并在七天内结束战争的最新提议。他似乎认为伊朗伊斯兰共和国已陷入绝境——伊朗经济状况糟糕是事实——并认为通过等待可以争取到更好的交易。
Let’s check in on the war with Iran. Everybody knows what that conflict has done to gas prices, fertilizer prices, and trade. What’s new is that over the weekend, Trump rejected Iran’s latest offer to return to the table and end the war in seven days. He appears to think he has the Islamic Republic over a barrel—it is a fact that the Iranian economy is in horrible shape—and can get a better deal by waiting them out.
这或许是特朗普可能确实说对的一件事——注意，是“可能”。他假定伊朗的经济状况越严峻，它就越会软化条件并急于求和。但一位专家上周末对半岛电视台表示：“危险在于，他把伊朗的痛苦与伊朗投降的意愿混为一谈。这两者不是一回事。”此外，拒绝这项提议，特朗普就放弃了在中期选举前告诉美国人战争已经结束的机会——并且确保汽油价格一直居高不下直到选举日。据《华尔街日报》上周末的一篇报道，特朗普还一直在告诉助手，他预计在投票结束后恢复轰炸。那会很受欢迎。
This is one thing that Trump might actually be correct about—emphasis on might. He assumes that the more dire Iran’s economic situation becomes, the more it will soften its terms and be desperate for peace. But one expert told Al Jazeera over the weekend: “The danger is that he is confusing Iranian pain with Iranian willingness to capitulate. Those are not the same thing.”Also, by rejecting the proposal, Trump is walking away from the chance to tell Americans that the war is over before the midterms—and ensuring that gas prices stay high through Election Day. Trump also has been telling aides, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, that he expects to resume bombing after the voting. That will be popular.
还有太多太多。特朗普不遗余力地鼓吹人工智能，实质上把反对数据中心的人称为白痴和乡巴佬。美国经济如今对数据中心建设的依赖已经到了令人警觉的程度。这一切也许最终会行得通。但（a）美国人讨厌它们，到处都在试图阻止其建设；（b）如果生产率和其他收益不尽如人意，人工智能泡沫可能会破裂——而且破裂得很惨。
There’s so much more. Trump promotes AI relentlessly, essentially calling people who oppose data centers idiots and rubes. The U.S. economy is dependent on data-center construction now to an alarming degree. This could all work out. But (a) Americans hate them and are trying to block their construction everywhere you look, and (b) if productivity and other gains are underwhelming, the AI bubble could burst—and burst hard.
牛津经济研究院的一位首席经济学家最近写道：“要让人工智能行业出现急剧回调，并不需要证明这项技术毫无价值，只需要出现相对于当前过高预期的失望即可。”特朗普已在这场辩论中明确站到了一边。如果人工智能不能兑现承诺，那又是这位所谓商人做出的又一个糟糕的经济决策。
A lead economist at Oxford Economics wrote recently: “For there to be a sharp correction in the AI sector, it doesn’t require the technology to prove worthless, only for there to be disappointment relative to the currently elevated expectations.”Trump has placed himself clearly on one side of this debate. If AI doesn’t deliver, that’s one more terrible economic decision by the so-called businessman.
最后，让我们花点时间谈谈特朗普上周末宣布的、将废除拜登时期汽车排放标准一事。从那种简单粗暴、放任自由市场野蛮生长的角度来看，这或许听起来是件好事。但这其实糟糕透顶。对地球而言，这很糟糕——因为特朗普，底特律已基本停止了向电动汽车转型的步伐，转而将未来押注在内燃机上。对经济而言，这同样是一场灾难。
Finally, let’s devote a moment to Trump’s announcement over the weekend that he’s rolling back Biden-era auto emissions standards. From a simple-minded, let-the-free-market-roar perspective, this sounds like a good thing, I guess. But it’s horrible. It’s horrible for the planet—because of Trump, Detroit has already mostly stopped moving toward electric vehicles and is betting its future on the internal combustion engine. But it’s awful for the economy too.
当新技术正在取代旧技术时，继续投资过时技术，通常都不会有好结果。欧洲、日本和韩国的汽车制造商正在向电动汽车转型，而一旦美国迎来新的民主党总统，美国也将再次跟进。因此，这是一次暂时但代价高昂的动荡：反复改造和重新改造装配厂，可能让底特律损失数十亿美元。但嘿——真正的男人就是要污染大气，该死的。
Investing in old technologies while new ones are taking over doesn’t usually pan out so well. Auto manufacturers in Europe, Japan, and South Korea are moving toward E.V.s, and as soon as there’s a new Democratic president, the United States will again too. So this is a temporary, but costly, disruption: Refitting and re-refitting assembly plants costs Detroit probably billions of dollars. But hey—real men pollute the atmosphere, dammit.
我完全不知道这一切是否会导致明年出现经济衰退。但我足够了解情况，知道这一点：特朗普正在摧毁经济。而他摧毁经济的原因，与大多数共和党总统摧毁经济的原因如出一辙。
I have no idea whether all this adds up to a recession next year. But I do know enough to know this. Trump is wrecking the economy. And he’s wrecking the economy for the same reason that most Republican presidents wreck the economy.
后凯恩斯时代——也就是美国从遵循约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯提出的“受监管的市场经济”原则，转向米尔顿·弗里德曼倡导的“不受监管的自由市场经济”原则的时期——始于20世纪70年代中期。在这段时间里，共有六位共和党总统执政（其中理查德·尼克松曾自称是凯恩斯主义者）；特朗普更是两次担任总统。这六位总统中的五位都导致了严重的经济危机，只有罗纳德·里根例外。
The post-Keynes era—the era when the United States broadly speaking switched from following the regulated-market principles of John Maynard Keynes to the unregulated, free-market principles of Milton Friedman—dates to the mid-1970s. That time period has seen six Republican presidents, going back to Gerald Ford (Richard Nixon was a self-professed Keynesian, at least some of the time) and counting Trump twice. Five of them have overseen economic calamities. Only Ronald Reagan did not.
造成这种局面的原因有很多：首先，当时的美联储主席保罗·沃尔克通过大幅提高利率成功遏制了通货膨胀；里根的减税政策虽然短暂地推动了经济增长，但也使美国陷入了巨额债务和财政赤字的困境，并加剧了社会不平等现象。此外，里根在税收政策上远没有今天的共和党人那么固执己见（他曾多次调整税收政策，尤其是针对社会保障制度的税收）。
There are a lot of reasons why, starting with then–Fed Chair Paul Volcker, who ended the inflation of the era by hiking interest rates dramatically. Reagan’s tax cuts did—briefly—spur economic growth (while also starting the country down the path toward massive debt and deficits and the rampant inequality that just keeps getting worse). Also, Reagan wasn’t nearly as doctrinaire on taxes as Republicans are today. He raised different taxes several times, most notably on Social Security.
然而，其他几位共和党总统的表现都极其糟糕。他们的经济政策要么基于谎言，要么纯粹是幻想。他们认为：降低税收能够带来与提高税收相同甚至更多的收入；或者认为：不受监管的自由市场总能自动解决社会问题。但事实证明，正如我们在加密货币和人工智能领域所看到的那样，这种不受监管的自由市场带来的问题远多于它解决的问题。
But other than that—terrible. Every single one of them. The reason is that they believe in economic nostrums that are either lies or fairy tales. Lie: that lower taxes can produce revenues equal to or even greater than higher taxes. Fairy tale: that the unregulated free market will unfailingly find solutions to society’s problems. As we’re seeing right now with cryptocurrencies and AI, the unregulated free market of the sort we have in this country now creates more problems than it solves.
因此，过去五次经济衰退（以及过去八次经济衰退中的七次）都发生在共和党总统执政期间，这绝非巧合。具体时间如下：1969年12月、1973年11月、1980年1月、1990年7月、2001年3月、2007年12月、2020年2月。唯一一次经济衰退发生在民主党总统（吉米·卡特）执政期间（1980年）。实际上，如果追溯到1953年，还会发现另外四次经济衰退也都发生在共和党总统执政期间——这意味着战后时期的11次经济衰退中有10次都发生在共和党执政时期。
And so it’s not a coincidence that the last five recessions, and seven of the last eight, have happened under Republican presidents. Look ’em up: December 1969, November 1973, January 1980, July 1981, July 1990, March 2001, December 2007, February 2020. Only the 1980 one happened under a Democrat (Jimmy Carter). In fact, you can go back to 1953 and add four more recessions, all of which happened during GOP presidencies. That’s 10 out of 11 in the postwar era.
特朗普对其中一次负有责任，诚然那不完全是他的错。那是由疫情驱动的。但如果莱昂·库珀曼和加里·希林的预测正确，而他主政期间又发生一次，那将完全由他负责。他或许已把国家带入泥潭，但至少他将以任何自由派民主党人都无法企及的力量，彻底粉碎了“我们需要一个商人”这一迷思。
Trump is responsible for one of them, and admittedly it was not entirely his fault. It was pandemic-driven. But if Leon Cooperman and Gary Shilling are right and he presides over another one, it will be entirely on him. He may have driven the country into the ditch, but at least he will have exploded the “we need a businessman” myth with a force no liberal Democrat could ever hope to.