2025年可以清晰预见的一个发展是中国和欧洲之间的贸易关系改善。这几乎是必然趋势，因为美国当选总统特朗普正在尽其所能地让全世界相信，美国将是一个不可靠的贸易伙伴。

在特朗普的第一个总统任期内，他已经明确了这一点，当时他对来自加拿大和欧盟的各种进口商品加征关税。从很多角度来看，这种做法都很奇怪，但最值得注意的是，特朗普提议的进口关税将公然违反他此前与墨加两国通过谈判达成的贸易协定。如果特朗普可以把与最亲密的两个盟友达成的贸易协定扔进垃圾桶，那么他与欧洲国家达成的任何协定还有什么价值可言？

如此一来，欧洲将目光投向其他地方将是明智之举，而中国将是显而易见的选择。事实上，国际货币基金组织的数据显示，从购买力平价来看，中国的经济规模已经比美国大得多，而且增长速度也快得多。

按照购买力平价衡量方法，大约十年前，中国的经济规模已经超过美国。如今中国的经济规模几乎比美国高出30%，国际货币基金组织预测，到2029年末，中国的该领先优势将扩大到40%以上。目前尚不清楚美国媒体为何坚持使用汇率衡量方法将中国称为世界第二大经济体，也许这只是美国的大国沙文主义使然。无论如何，对中国的这个称呼反映了政治偏见而非世界现实。

无论如何，中国比美国更大的经济规模使其成为更具吸引力的贸易伙伴，且中国更有可能比美国信守承诺。出于这个原因，我们可以相当肯定地认为，欧洲将寻求加强与中国的贸易关系。

Best Bet for 2025: Stronger Trade Ties Between Europe and China

 

Dean Baker

   

One development for 2025 that can be seen clearly in the crystal ball is improving trade ties between China and Europe. The reason this is a virtual certainty is Donald Trump is doing everything he can to convince the world that, under his leadership, the United States is an unreliable trading partner.

He already worked hard to establish this point in his first term when he arbitrarily slapped tariffs on various imports from Canada and the European Union. His ostensible rationale was national defense, but no one outside of Mar-a-Lago could take that one seriously. We worried that we may not be able to get steel from Canada if the US is engaged in a war with another country? Or maybe we’re worried we will be at war with Canada, and they will cut us off. 

But Trump is showing that the craziness will get even worse in his second term. Before even taking office Trump made strong demands that Canada and Mexico essentially do things they are already doing (block drug shipments and restrict the flow of immigrants) or he will slap 25 percent taxes on all the goods we import from them.

This is bizarre from many angles, but most notably because Trump’s proposed import taxes would be a flagrant violation of the trade agreement he negotiated with Mexico and Canada just four and a half years ago. If Trump can just toss into the garbage a trade deal with two of our closest allies — one that he widely trumpeted at the time — then what would be the value of any deal he would strike with European countries? Clearly Trump does not feel bound by his commitments and there is no one in the US political structure who can force Trump to adhere to agreements made by the government, even when it was Trump himself who made the deal.

This is the way Trump has always done business. He routinely reneged on his commitments and often refused to pay contractors after they had done work on his projects. Many contractors would insist on payment in advance from Trump because they knew they would have a tough time collecting after the fact.

If the US is not going to be a reliable trading partner for at least the next four years, and possibly many more years into the future, Europe would be wise to look elsewhere. And there is one obvious elsewhere: China.

China’s economy is in fact already considerably larger than the US economy and growing far more rapidly. This fact is obscured by the tendency in the US media to use exchange rate measures of GDP, rather than purchasing power parity (PPP) measures. 

An exchange rate measure simply takes a country’s GDP, measured in its own currency, and then converts it into dollars at the current exchange rate. By contrast, a PPP measure uses a common set of prices to assess the value of all the goods and services produced in each country. This would mean that we apply the same price for a car, a computer, and a haircut, in both the US and China. Economists would usually argue that for most purposes the PPP measure is more useful.

By this measure, China’s economy grew larger than the US economy roughly a decade ago. It is now almost 30 percent larger, and according to I.M.F. projections will be more than 40 percent larger by the end of the decade. It’s not clear why the U.S. media insists on using the exchange rate measure of GDP in reporting that routinely refers to China as the world’s second-largest economy, perhaps it’s just nationalistic chauvinism. In any case, that call reflects political biases not realities in the world.

The larger size of China’s economy makes it a more attractive trading partner in any case, but it is also more likely to stick to its commitments than the United States as long as Donald Trump is in charge. For this reason, we can be fairly certain that Europe will be looking to shore up its trade relations with China as Donald Trump puts on his clown show in Washington and Mar-a-Lago.