中美贸易目前的情况是中国顺差，美国逆差，而且这个数字还特别大。表面看来，中国向美国买了不少产品，搞的美国产业工人失业，工会组织逼的政府今天整个配额，明天整个反倾销，为了减小中国的出口能力还整天请求中国让人民币升值。结果是美国到处是中国产品，中国外汇储备越来越高，要变成世界工厂了。给人的感觉，就好像中国在步步进攻美国，美国只有招架之功而无还手之力。
但工会组织可不是美国的统治阶级。为什么美国国内反对声音越来越大，美国产业转移反而越来越严重，难道是美国政府没办法管了么？其实真实的情况是目前这种中美贸易状况对美国大大有利，这是华尔街日报一贯的立场，也可以说是美国的统治者真正的看法。今天该报有一篇文章《We Think, They Sweat》，说得再明白不过，简直是赤裸裸的帝国主义言论，我不禁想起电视剧《走向共和》里面李鸿章的一句台词：“这才像是狼说的话嘛！”
文章并不长，以下我把其要点编译一下，原文附在后面。
- - 作者首先提到苹果公司现在的主打产品，mp3 播放器 iPod。现在美国市场上的这个产品是中国组装，加州苹果公司设计。这个东西无非是苹果的软件，很便宜的磁盘和一个价值12美元的芯片，该芯片由美国硅谷某公司设计，台湾生产。
- - 整个 iPod 售价差不多 $265，其中的纯利润是怎么分配的呢？负责组装的中国公司的利润大概只有4美元，设计芯片的公司利润是5美元，苹果公司的利润：65美元。
- - 因为这个 iPod 的成功，过去一年苹果公司的股票价格从 $21 涨到 $64.
- - 因为从中国“进口” iPod，中美贸易中美方逆差增加了15亿美元，而这15亿美元的逆差造成美国国内财富的增加是160亿美元。作者说，我愿意天天要这样的逆差，那些苹果股票的持有者当然也愿意。
- - 在这种情况下让人民币升值美元贬值有什么意思？如果美元贬值，外国人在买美国的奔腾芯片，iPod，windows xp 和 oracle 数据库的时候就获得了一个“根本不必要”的便宜。根本没必要把这些东西贱卖，因为反正他们为了运行自己的经济不买也不行。"They have to buy them anyway to run their economies (well, maybe not iPods) so why discount?"
- - 作者说，美国愿要保持强势，美国要做高端。让外国人做低收入的体力活，美国要做的工作是高科技知识产权，药品，好莱坞电影，和 U2 乐队。
- - 中国和日本两国的外汇储备大多又重新借给美国，买了美国的国债，对此作者是表示欢迎的。作者说，外国人差不多拥有全部美国国债的 43%，这样一来我们就不用买了。谁想要只有 3% 汇报率的国债？我们要买应该买那些高利润公司的股票。。。。。。。
- - 最后作者说，我们没必要让美元贬值，就让中日两国不停的购买美元资产吧，这样他们才能使自己的货币保持低价，以便继续向我们出口他们的工业产品。而我们靠向他们卖能更好的生产这些产品所需要的工具致富。
We Think, They Sweat
Andy Kessler. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Dec 23, 2004. pg. A.10
You want a scapegoat for the dollar's almost daily decline -- the Chinese water torture on the U.S. economy? I blame Steve Jobs. Apple is the worst offender in the decline of U.S. manufacturing. Their engineers sit around in air-conditioned offices on streets with cutesy names like Infinite Loop in Cupertino, Calif., and have others make stuff for them. They imported two million iPods assembled by thousands of Chinese workers just last quarter -- an almost $1.5 billion annualized trade deficit in iPods alone.
Those in D.C. who can do something about this -- former railroaders and breakfast cereal moguls, are so worried about trade deficits that they refuse to defend the greenback, even begging China to unpeg the yuan from the dollar so we can decline against it as well. We're in a place called Vertigo. Economists weep that foreigners will no longer fund our spending and that America surely has peaked. The dollar is destined to the depths of despair until it drops so low that we get those manufacturing jobs back. Gee, thanks Steve Jobs.
I checked my wallet and realized that I own dollars, including my bank account, house and stocks. Lowering them in value hurts every American. I was in such a funk thinking about all this that I played my own infinite loop of Muddy Waters on my appropriately blue iPod mini. I happened to turn it over and read the fine print. Sure enough -- "Assembled in China." But it also says "Designed by Apple in California." In the middle of the song "Trouble No More," it all started making sense.
Over the last year, two things have happened. First, Apple has increased sales by over a third, almost all from iPods -- those two million of them at $265 each last quarter and 100 million songs sold via their iTunes service. An iPod is just the combination of some Apple software, cheap disk drives and a $12 chip from a Silicon Valley company named PortalPlayer. I calculated that Apple pays $200 per iPod to Chinese assembler Inventec to slap it all together. Even with cheap labor, Inventec has almost no profits, I'd bet under $10, probably more like $4. PortalPlayer, by the way, e-mails its design to Taiwan to be fabricated, with profits of $5 per chip.
The second change is that Apple's stock has gone from $21 to $64. Pretty cool, capitalism at its best. Why? Because Apple keeps $65 per iPod -- money chases profits! If you assume the stock-price increase is all due to the iPod (it is), then that business is worth some $15 billion. Add in PortalPlayer's market value of $1 billion and you get a feel for how the world works. A $1.5 billion trade deficit increases wealth in the U.S. by $16 billion. I'll take that trade any day. So will all the holders of the retirement accounts who own Apple's stock. So, why am I caring about deficits again? Trade deficits are an economic construct, and lowering the dollar won't solve a thing. We are moving low-margin, low-pay jobs overseas, but fortunately, are left with high-margin, high-pay intellectual-property jobs. Would you rather own Apple making a margin of $65 or Invetec with $4, on the same product? Me too. We may have trade deficits of $550 billion this year, but we enjoy a huge margin surplus.
The very illogical way (so no one believes it) to get this all back in balance is for the dollar to rise. A lower dollar means foreigners get a needless discount on our productive stuff -- Pentiums and iPods, Windows XP and Oracle databases, and Cisco routers. They have to buy them anyway to run their economies (well, maybe not iPods) so why discount? Add non-productive but life-enhancing intellectual property to complete the sweep -- drugs, Hollywood movies, U2. A weak dollar won't bring back manufacturing jobs -- with $20/hour here vs. $2 in China, the dollar would have to drop 90%. And why should we encourage low-paying jobs in this country?
Foreigners buy Treasury bonds -- they own 43% of them -- so we don't have to. Who wants 3% returns? We should own stocks of the high-margin companies that benefit from this design vs. manufacturing divide. As we move to an intellectual-property economy, our wealth will come from exporting profitable designs and importing more finished goods. Higher salaries and our stock market balance this all out as those dollars flow back in. Of course, bean counters can't find the money that flows into the stock market, it is just bean dip. The $4-trillion-plus in trade deficits since 1976 has been matched by an $11 trillion increase in value of our stock market. That's about all you have to know. Plus, as Jack Nicholson might say, they can't handle our dollars. Too many dollars in foreign central banks leads to overlending to wasteful domestic companies. Japan is just emerging 15 years later from a nonperforming-loan hangover. China is face-first in the punch bowl with half its bank loans uncollectible: If their currency spikes, it might go to 100%.
Rather than debase our wallets, Japan and China have to buy dollar assets to keep their currencies from rising too much if they want to continue to sell us their industrial output, while of course, we get rich selling them the tools to do it productively. I'd suggest thanking Bono, er, Steve Jobs, for the iPod economy.
