I.H.17.Warren Buffett.Trade Deficit

1、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

44. Long-term trade deficit is “a significant minus for the country”

长期贸易逆差“对国家来说是一个重大负面因素”

WARREN BUFFETT: And the second question about the trade deficit, that’s a very interesting thing.

沃伦·巴菲特：关于第二个贸易逆差问题，这是一个非常有趣的话题。

Because when you run a trade deficit, what you’re doing is you’re trading assets of one sort or another for goods, beyond what you’re sending abroad.

因为当你出现贸易逆差时，实际上你是在用某种形式的资产去换取超过你出口的商品。

So in effect, you are selling off a tiny bit of the farm so that the country can consume more than it’s producing.

换句话说，你是在“卖掉一点农场”，以便国家能够消费超过其生产的东西。

If you run a net trade deficit, the country, in aggregate, is consuming less than — or consuming more — than it’s producing.

如果存在贸易逆差，从整体上看，这个国家的消费超过了其生产能力。

And if you’re a very rich country, you can’t even see it because if you run a trade deficit of a few hundred billion dollars, you know, compared to an economy that’s maybe worth, what, 40 trillion or something like that, you don’t see it.

如果你是一个非常富裕的国家，你甚至感觉不到它。因为即使贸易逆差有几千亿美元，和一个价值可能40万亿美元的经济体相比，你看不到太大的影响。

But you’re trading off a tiny bit of the farm every year to live a little bit better than if you just lived off the produce of the farm that year.

但你每年都在“卖掉一点农场”，这样可以比只靠那一年的农场产出生活得更好一些。

And you can do it with IOUs if you’ve got a good record. You can’t do it with IOUs if you’re a country that’s got a terrible record.

如果你的信用记录良好，你可以用“欠条”（债务）来做到这一点。但如果你的信用记录糟糕，就无法用“欠条”来操作。

So they have to denominate their debt in dollars. And, of course, they don’t have the ability to denominate a lot of dollars, and people don’t want to accept a weak currency.

因此，他们必须用美元来计价债务。当然，他们无法发行太多美元，因为人们不愿接受弱势货币。

So a weak country can’t get away with doing that, unless it’s getting special-type loans from agencies set up to do that.

所以，一个弱势国家无法通过这种方式实现贸易逆差，除非它从专门提供贷款的机构获得特别的贷款。

We can do almost anything we want in this country, because we don’t confiscate property and we don’t — we haven’t destroyed a currency that the people have accepted, in terms of payment for their goods, over the years.

而我们国家几乎可以做任何想做的事，因为我们不会没收财产，也没有破坏作为商品支付手段、被人们接受的货币。

But I basically think a significant trade deficit over a long enough time is a significant minus for the country.

但我基本认为，长期、大规模的贸易逆差对国家来说是一个重大负面因素。

You won’t see it though, day-by-day, or week-by-week, or month-by-month.

不过，你不会在日常、每周或每月看到明显的影响。

But eventually, if you trade for trinkets or whatever you’re getting beyond what you’re sending, and you trade away your assets —

但最终，如果你用资产去换取小饰品或任何超过出口量的东西，你就是在出卖自己的资产。

Fortunately, some of the assets we traded not that many years ago, like movie studios and some of those things, the other people got the short end of the bargain on.

幸运的是，几年前我们交易的一些资产，比如电影工作室等，结果是其他人吃了亏。

顺差国很可能永远买不到对的资产，如果能买到就不会是顺差国。

But by and large, it’s not a good policy for the country to run large trade deficits year after year.

但总的来说，年复一年地维持巨额贸易逆差对国家并非良策。

Charlie?

查理？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, it’s — that’s certainly true if what you’re trading for is trinkets, or consumer goods, or something.

查理·芒格：嗯，如果你用贸易逆差换来的是小饰品、消费品之类的东西，那肯定是个问题。

But, of course, a developing country that ran a trade deficit to put in power plants and what have, that might be a very smart thing to do.

但如果一个发展中国家通过贸易逆差投资于电厂等基础设施，那可能是一件非常明智的事情。

In fact, the United States once did that.

事实上，美国曾经也这么做过。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we did it with railroads in a huge way, you know, and —

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我们曾大规模地用贸易逆差修建铁路，没错，而且——

CHARLIE MUNGER: But under modern conditions, do we look like a twosome that would love a big trade deficit? (Laughter)

查理·芒格：但在现代条件下，我们看起来像是喜欢巨额贸易逆差的两个人吗？（笑声）

WARREN BUFFETT: No. It’s one thing to build railroads with the process, but it’s another thing, you know, to buy radios and television sets.

沃伦·巴菲特：当然不是。用贸易逆差修建铁路是一回事，但用它去买收音机和电视机又是另一回事。

I mean, it depends what you’re getting.

我的意思是，这取决于你用贸易逆差换来了什么。

But by and large, we run a trade deficit on consumption goods. And that’s not a big plus over time.

但总体来看，我们的贸易逆差主要用于消费品。而从长期来看，这并不是什么好事。

2、《2005-04-30 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

16. U.S. trade deficit’s economic threat

美国贸易逆差的经济威胁

WARREN BUFFETT: Number 8?

沃伦·巴菲特：第八号？

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Ola Larson (PH), from Salt Lake City, originally from Sweden.

观众成员：我的名字是奥拉·拉尔森（音），来自盐湖城，原籍瑞典。

I read your annual report where you mentioned how the current account deficit, or a trade deficit, has to eventually come to an end.

我读了你的年度报告，你提到经常账户赤字或贸易赤字最终必须结束。

And in the report, you were reluctant to give views, a forecast of how this would come down from $2 billion a day.

而在报告中，您似乎不愿预测这个每天20亿美元的赤字将如何消减。

Would you, nevertheless, be willing to share some thought on what — how it might come down, if you have any views on this?

尽管如此，您是否愿意分享一些想法，关于这可能会如何发展，如果您对此有任何看法？

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, that really is the $64 question, because, we are, in my view — and Charlie doesn’t — he’s not as on board on this as I am, so it’s important that you listen to him on this, too.

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，这确实是个价值 64 美元的问题，因为在我看来——而查理对此并不像我这样认同，所以你也要听听他的看法。

The — it does seem to me that a $618 billion trade deficit and a larger current account deficit, rich as we are, strong as this country is, that something will happen that will change that in a major way at some point, and that the longer that it goes before changing, the more likely it is that something fairly significant happens.

在我看来，6180 亿美元的贸易逆差和更大的经常账户逆差，即使我们很富有，这个国家很强大，某种事情将在某个时候发生，从而以重大方式改变这一状况，而且这种情况持续越久而不改变，就越有可能发生相当重大的事情。

But most economists — most observers — would still say that some kind of a soft landing is possible. Or they would say it’s likely. They never, to my mind, they never quite explain, you know, what the soft landing is.

但大多数经济学家——大多数观察家——仍然会说某种形式的软着陆是可能的。或者他们会说这很可能。他们从来没有，在我看来，他们从来没有真正解释过，软着陆到底是什么。

They just say it’s, you know, it’s likely to be a soft landing but it could be something different but we still think it will be a soft landing.

他们只是说，你知道，这可能是软着陆，但也可能会有所不同，但我们仍然认为这将是软着陆。

But I don’t know what a soft landing is, exactly, in the sense of how the numbers come down quite significantly, and if they don’t come down, the current account surplus — or deficit — means that we are transferring more and more wealth abroad and that we will, in addition to our trade deficit, we will, at some point, have a very significant deficit in terms of the net investment position that the rest of the world holds on us. So it becomes a compounding effect.

我并不完全清楚“软着陆”到底意味着什么，特别是在这些数字必须大幅下降的情况下。如果它们不下降，那么经常账户赤字就意味着我们正在将越来越多的财富转移到海外，而且随着时间的推移，除了贸易赤字之外，我们还将面临巨大的对外净投资赤字。这将带来复合效应。

I do recommend — there was an op-ed piece in The Washington Post on April 10 by [former Federal Reserve Chairman] Paul Volcker, and he has expressed himself some on this, and he gets into the question of whether it can be a soft landing or not. But I think he certainly expresses some real apprehension about whether a soft landing will be the likely result.

我确实推荐——4 月 10 日《华盛顿邮报》上有一篇由[前美联储主席]保罗·沃尔克撰写的专栏文章，他在这方面表达了一些看法，并探讨了是否可能实现软着陆的问题。但我认为他确实对软着陆是否可能成为最终结果表示了一些真正的担忧。

In the kind of world we live in, with so much of the assets of the world, whether they be foreign exchange or whether contracts or whether they be stocks or bonds or junk bonds or whatever, I think as high a percentage is on what I would call a hair trigger now as has ever existed.

在我们生活的这个世界中，无论是外汇、合同、股票、债券还是垃圾债券，世界上如此多的资产，我认为现在处于我所称的“随时引爆”状态的概率是有史以来最高的。

In other words, I think there are more people that go to bed at night with a position in foreign exchange, or bonds, or a carry trade, or stocks, or whatever, that some event that could happen overnight would cause them to want to change that position in the next 24 hours. I think that’s the highest, perhaps in history.

换句话说，我认为有更多的人在晚上持有外汇、债券、套利交易、股票或其他头寸入睡，而某些可能在一夜之间发生的事件会导致他们在接下来的 24 小时内想要改变该头寸。我认为这在历史上是前所未有的。

Somebody [economist Thomas Friedman] has referred to it as the “electronic herd,” that it’s out there.

有人[经济学家托马斯·弗里德曼]称其为“电子牛群”，它就在外面。

I mean people can with — they can give vent to decisions involving billions and billions and billions of dollars, you know, with the press of a key, virtually. And that electric — I think that electronic herd is at an all-time high.

我的意思是，人们可以——他们可以通过按下一个键，几乎瞬间就做出涉及数十亿、数十亿、数十亿美元的决定。并且我认为这个电子牛群正处于历史最高点。

I think that some exogenous event — it was almost Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 — but some exogenous event — and we will have them — will cause it — I think it could very well cause some kind of stampede by that herd.

我认为某个外部事件，类似于1998年长期资本管理公司（LTCM）的危机，可能会引发这种牛群的踩踏。

You can’t get rid — if you’re the rest of the world — you can’t get rid of dollars.

如果你是世界其他地方的人，你无法摆脱美元。

I mean, if you’re sitting in Japan, China, or someplace, and you own a lot of U.S. government bonds, if you sell them to somebody in the United States you get U.S. dollars. So you still have U.S. assets. If you sell them to somebody in France, you’ve now got euros but they’ve got the [debt.]

我的意思是，如果你身在日本、中国或其他地方，并且持有大量美国政府债券，如果你把它们卖给美国的某个人，你会得到美元。所以你仍然拥有美国资产。如果你把它们卖给法国的某个人，你现在有了欧元，但他们有了[债务]。

You can’t you can’t get rid of those assets. But you can have people trying to head for the door very quickly with them, under certain circumstances.

你不能，你不能摆脱那些资产。但在某些情况下，你可以让人们带着它们迅速离开。

Volcker said, in this thing, he said in the second paragraph, “Yet, under the placid surface there are disturbing trends: huge imbalances, disequilibria, risks — call them what you will. Altogether the circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable,” and I emphasize intractable, “as any I can remember, and I can remember quite a lot.”

沃尔克说，在这件事上，他在第二段中说：“然而，在平静的表面下，有一些令人不安的趋势：巨大的不平衡、不均衡、风险——你可以随便怎么称呼它们。总的来说，这些情况在我看来是危险且棘手的，”我强调棘手，“就像我能记得的任何情况一样，而我能记得的情况还不少。”

Well, Paul Volcker can remember quite a lot.

好吧，保罗·沃尔克记得很多。

And I agree with that. I don’t — I have no idea — I have no idea on timing, whatsoever. In economics, it’s far easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen.

我同意这一点。我不知道——我完全不知道——时间问题。在经济学中，预测会发生什么比预测何时发生要容易得多。

I mean, you can see bubbles develop and things, but you do not know how big the bubble will get. For example, you know, this happened five years ago in the market.

我的意思是，你可以看到泡沫的形成和发展，但你不知道泡沫会有多大。例如，你知道，这在五年前的市场上发生过。

So you — predicting timing is — I’ve just never been successful at it nor do I try to do it.

所以你——预测时机——我从来没有成功过，也不尝试去做。

Predicting what will happen, I think, is a much easier sort of thing. And I would say that what is going on, in terms of trade policy, is going to have very important consequences.

预测将会发生什么，我认为这要容易得多。而且我会说，就贸易政策而言，正在发生的事情将会产生非常重要的后果。

It was not addressed in the last presidential campaign by either candidate in any meaningful way at all.

在上次总统竞选中，任何一位候选人都没有以任何有意义的方式解决这个问题。

Now, I’m not sure if, you know, you were standing up in front of the American people, and somebody is giving you three minutes to explain this whole situation, when 90 percent of your audience couldn’t define current account, you know, it’s not an easy game. But it’s an important one.

现在，我不确定，如果你知道，你站在美国人民面前，有人给你三分钟来解释整个情况，而你 90%的观众可能无法定义经常账户，你知道，这不是一个简单的任务。但这是一个重要的任务。

Now, Charlie is less enthusiastic about our foreign exchange position, somewhat, than I am, so I want to yield the floor here for a significant period of time while he gives you the other view.

现在，查理对我们的外汇头寸的热情比我稍微低一些，所以我想在这里让出相当长的时间，让他给你们提供另一种观点。

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I’m, if anything, a little more repelled than you are by the lack of virtue in the way our nation uses consumer credit and the way we run the public finances.

查理·芒格：嗯，如果说有什么不同的话，我比你对国家的消费信贷使用方式和公共财政的管理更感到不安。

And I have a feeling that eventually a lack of virtue is going to hurt one.

我有一种感觉，缺乏道德最终会让人付出代价。

Where we differ is that I agree with [18th century Scottish economist] Adam Smith that a great civilization has a lot of ruin in that, meaning it will bear a lot of abuse.

我们的分歧在于，我同意[18 世纪苏格兰经济学家]亚当·斯密的观点，即一个伟大的文明中有很多折腾，这意味着它能够承受大量的滥用。

And so I think there are dangers in the current situation that make it unwise for anybody to swing for the fences. But I don’t think that we have a certainty that the system won’t stand a lot more of the kind of abuse it’s getting now.

因此，我认为当前局势存在一些危险，使得任何人都不明智地全力以赴。但我不认为我们可以确定这个系统不会承受更多它现在所遭受的那种滥用。

WARREN BUFFETT: What do you think the end will be?

沃伦·巴菲特：你认为结局会是什么？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Bad. (Laughter)

查理·芒格：糟糕。（笑声）

WARREN BUFFETT: I knew I could count on him. (Laughs)

沃伦·巴菲特：我知道我可以指望他。（笑声）

No, we are truly, in this country, like an incredibly, I mean incredibly, rich family that owns, we’ll say metaphorically, millions of acres of land. They can’t see, they can’t travel to the outer reaches of their domain.

说真的，我们这个国家，真的是一个非常富有的家庭。我们可以比喻说，这个家庭拥有数百万英亩的土地，甚至无法看到它的边界。

But, nevertheless, they sit on the front porch and wait for the produce to come in from this vast holding, and when they get it all they still want to consume about 6 percent more than everything that’s been produced on the farm.

但是，尽管如此，他们还是坐在前廊上，等待这片广阔土地上的农产品送来，而当他们得到所有产品时，他们仍然想要消费比农场生产的多6%。

And they have the ability to do that by simply selling off a little piece of the farm every day, and every year, that they can’t even see. So they don’t feel any poorer at the end of the day or the end of the year, because it’s still, as far as their eyesight can see, they own everything that God ever created.

他们能够做到这一点，只需每天卖掉农场的一小部分，每年卖掉一小部分，他们甚至看不见。因此，在一天结束或一年结束时，他们并不觉得自己更穷，因为在他们的视线范围内，他们仍然拥有上帝创造的一切。

And they can sell that little piece or they can mortgage it. They can send IOUs to these people that are giving them the extra goods to consume.

他们可以出售那小块土地，或者他们可以抵押它。他们可以向那些给他们额外商品消费的人发送借据。

And we are very, very, very rich family. And we produce a whole lot and we consume a little bit more than we produce.

我们是一个非常非常非常富有的家庭。我们生产很多，消费比生产的稍多一点。

And we trade away a little bit of the farm or put a little bit of a mortgage on every day and the rest of the world is happy to take a little piece of our farm or take a mortgage on it because it’s such a terrific asset and we’ve behaved so well over the years.

我们每天都在出让一点农场或抵押一点，而世界其他地方乐于接受我们农场的一小部分或抵押，因为它是如此出色的资产，而且我们多年来表现得很好。

And so they’re willing to work a little harder to send us something so that we can consume a little bit more than we produce.

所以他们愿意更加努力地工作，给我们送来一些东西，这样我们就可以消费得比生产得多一点。

It’s been going on a while. It’s accelerated a lot in the last few years. And more and more the rest of the world is owning part of us and we’re going to have to service that ownership, either through interest if they took it in IOUs, or in some other way.

已经持续了一段时间。过去几年中，这一趋势加速了。越来越多的世界其他地方拥有我们的一部分，我们将不得不为这种所有权提供服务，无论是通过利息（如果他们以借据的形式持有），还是通过其他方式。

And it can go on a long time. But if it goes on a long time, the world will own a good bit of us and our children will be paying, one way or another, for the fact that we got to consume more than we produced.

这可能会持续很长时间。但如果持续很长时间，世界将拥有我们的一大部分，而我们的孩子将以某种方式为我们消费超过生产的事实买单。

It could happen — you could have — you’ve obviously had some less interest in the rest of the world accepting dollars by the fact that the dollar has declined somewhat in value in the last few years.

这可能发生——你可能有——显然，由于美元在过去几年中价值有所下降，世界其他地区对接受美元的兴趣有所减少。

In other words, the investment in us is always going to be equal to the overconsumption. I mean, it’s an equation.

换句话说，对我们的投资总是等于过度消费。我的意思是，这是一个等式。

But if people get a little less excited about one — enthused about one side of the equation — it reflects itself in the pricing mechanism.

但是，如果人们对方程式不那么兴奋，它就会反映在定价机制中。

And the world has demonstrated a diminishing enthusiasm for dollars in the last few years as they get flooded with them. We send $2 billion out every day, whether we like it or not and whether they like it or not.

近年来，随着美元泛滥，世界对美元的热情逐渐减弱。无论我们是否愿意，也无论他们是否愿意，我们每天都会输出 20 亿美元。

Now, the question is, does that reach some tipping point at some point or does some exogenous event come about that causes people to want to rush for exits? Who knows?

现在，问题是，这是否会在某个时刻达到某个临界点，或者是否会出现某个外部事件导致人们想要急于退出？谁知道呢？

I have a hard time thinking of any outcome from this that involves an appreciating dollar, but, as Charlie will point out in just a second, there have been times when we’ve been surprised.

我很难想出任何会导致美元升值的结果，但正如查理马上会指出的，有时候我们也会感到惊讶。

Charlie? 查理？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, the counter-argument is that, what does it matter if the foreigners own 10 percent more of the United States, if, at that time, the total wealth of the United States is 30 percent higher than it is now.

查理·芒格：是的，反对的观点是，如果在那个时候，美国的总财富比现在高出 30%，那么外国人多拥有美国 10%的股份又有什么关系呢。

And so, people who have that point of view just roll with it.

因此，持有这种观点的人就顺其自然。

And some of them think that if we didn’t manufacture anything in the United States and just sat here running hedge funds, we would have a wonderful economy because it comports with Republican principles.

他们中的一些人认为，如果我们在美国不制造任何东西，只是在这里经营对冲基金，我们将拥有一个美好的经济，因为这符合共和党的原则。

WARREN BUFFETT: We could cut each other’s hair, too, actually, I mean —

沃伦·巴菲特：实际上，我们也可以给对方理发，我的意思是——

But back in the late 18th century, obviously, the idea of taxation without representation caused a certain amount of trouble, and ownership of the rest of the world — by the rest of the world of this country would be seen as a form of taxation, I think, 20 years from now, by the people who resided here.

在18世纪末，无代表不纳税的理念显然引发了某些问题。而世界其他地方拥有我们国家的一部分资产，可能会在未来20年内被美国人民视为一种税收形式。

If we — if, instead of fighting the Revolutionary War, we’d simply made a deal with England and said we’ll give you three percent or five percent of our national product forever and you let us be free and we’ll just mail it — send the royalty over every day — that might have looked like a good alternative to war in, you know, in 1776.

如果我们——如果我们没有打独立战争，而是直接与英国达成协议，说我们将永远给你们我们国民生产总值的百分之三或百分之五，你们让我们自由，我们每天就把这笔钱寄过去——在 1776 年，这可能看起来是一个比战争更好的选择。

But I don’t think that subsequent generations would have reacted well. I mean, something would have happened over time.

但我认为后代不会有好的反应。我的意思是，随着时间的推移，总会发生一些事情。

And I have a feeling that the idea of America paying tribute to the rest of the world because of the overconsumption patterns of a previous generation seems to be — I don’t think that’s a particularly stable scenario.

我觉得，由于上一代的过度消费模式，美国向世界其他国家支付贡品的想法似乎——我认为这不是一个特别稳定的局面。

But that’s why we have only 21 billion in foreign exchange contracts.

但这就是为什么我们只有 210 亿美元的外汇合约。

Charlie might have a little less, or maybe none, if he were running it entirely, and I might have somewhat more, if I didn’t know I’d have him sitting up here next to me next year. (Laughs)

如果查理完全负责的话，他可能会少一点，或者根本没有，而如果我不知道明年他会坐在我旁边，我可能会多一点。（笑）

I.H.17.Warren Buffett.Trade Deficit

I.H.17.Warren Buffett.Trade Deficit

1、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

2、《2005-04-30 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

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