生产过剩:贸易保护主义的根源

Overproduction: the Root Cause of Trade Protectionism

目前在国际贸易领域的现实情况是:各国政府一边大唱自由贸易的高调,一边不得不实施贸易保护主义措施。要解释这种现象,主流的自由贸易理论已不能胜任,我们必须进行深刻的理论反思。这种反思的著名先驱是保罗·萨缪尔森。本文更进一步,在程恩富提出的"资源和需要双约束假设"的基础上,以生产过剩的视角取代西方主流经济学的资源稀缺视角,说明阻碍自由贸易和引发当前经济危机的根本原因仍是马克思等经济学家指出过的生产过剩。不认真正视和妥善解决生产过剩问题,国际贸易就不可能实现真正的自由。

It’s a common paradox in today’s international trading: the governments preach up the free trade on the one hand, and on the other hand they have to resort to the trade protectionism measures. As the mainstream theory of free trade has proven to be incompetent to interpret such phenomenon, we need more in-depth theoretical reflections. Paul A. Samuelson is a pioneer leading this kind of reflections. Based on the hypothesis of 'the dual constraints of resource and demand' proposed by Dr. Cheng Enfu, this article ascribes the troubled free trade and current financial crisis to the overproduction, a problem which had been addressed by Marx and some other economists, instead of blaming on the resource scarcity as the western mainstream economists often do. If we fail to attach enough attention to the problem of overproduction and work out effective solution, the international trade will not be fully freed in the real sense.