The vast expansion in international trade owes much to a revolution in the business of moving freight

国际贸易的蓬勃发展很大程度上得益干货物运输业的革命。

A 国际贸易总量在以惊人的速度增长。全球经济增长速度是每年3％多一点，但贸易量的年复合增长率却约是它的2倍。从肉类到机械，外国产品在任何国家的经济中都扮演着重要角色，同时，那些向来只注重本国市场的公司开始受到外国市场吸引。

AInternational trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the world, and foreign markets now tempt businesses that never much worried about sales beyond their nation's borders.

B 国际商业发展的巨大动力是什么?类似关税和进口配额等国际贸易壁垒的减少当然是一个原因。传统上扮演着较次要角色的很多国家的经济开放是第二个原因。但是谁也没有注意到进出口贸易膨胀的第三个原因：运输成品抵达市场的成本在迅速下降。在理论上，世界贸易中的运输成本可以忽略。一旦生产出来，人们就假定成品会被马上无需任何费用地从甲地运到乙地。但是，真实的世界充满了摩擦。廉价劳动力或许使得中国的服装在美国市场很走俏，但是如果运输延误，占用流动资金并造成冬季服装春季运到，贸易就失去了优势。

C 自从20世纪初期，农业和制造业对于各国都是最重要的两个部门，几乎占了德国、意大利和法国总产量的70％，而在美国、英国和日本也占到了40％～50％。所以统治国际商业的是小麦、木材和铁矿石等原材料和加工过的产品，例如肉类和钢铁。但是这类产品体积庞大而且笨重，运输它们的成本相对较高。

BWhat lies behind this explosion in international commerce? The general worldwide decline in trade barriers, such as customs duties and import quotas, is surely one explanation. The economic opening of countries that have traditionally been minor players is another. But one force behind the import-export boom has passed all but unnoticed: the rapidly falling cost of getting goods to market. Theoretically, in the world of trade, shipping costs do not matter. Goods, once they have been made, are assumed to move instantly and at no cost from place to place. The real world, however, is full of frictions. Cheap labour may make Chinese clothing competitive in America, but if delays in shipment tie up working capital and cause winter coats to arrive in spring, trade may lose its advantages.

D 各国仍更多地在与周边邻国做着贸易。可是制造业已经转型，产品的价值和其大小、重量没有直接的联系。现在，产成品占据出口贸易的大部分。由于科技进步，零部件的重量变轻，制成品已经变得体积小、重量轻，这样就节省了每一美元进出口货物的运输成本。

E 为了说明这一切如何影响贸易，不妨来看一下计算机光驱制造业的例子。世界绝大多数光驱生产都集中在东南亚地区。原因也许只是光驱价值不菲却体积小而重量轻，从而运输费用低廉。如果在日本和得克萨斯的计算机生产商从新加坡进口，不会面临比从当地购买更高昂的运费。距离不会对光驱制造业的全球化造成障碍。

CAt the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere, accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan. International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed commodities, such as meat and steel. But these sorts of products are heavy and bulky and the cost of transporting them relatively high.

F 这对于飞速发展的信息工业更是如此。胶卷和光盘的航空运输费用也很廉价。计算机软件出口甚至不需要所谓的“装船”，而是通过电话线就可以实现从甲国到乙国的传送。所以运费和货物的安置就不再是影响产品产地选择的重要因素。商家在选择产地时可以考虑劳动力等其他方面，而较少担心产品运输的成本。

G 在很多国家，一些规章制度的撤销也对贸易过程产生影响。但是在幕后。诸如集装箱化和中间运输模式等技术改革使得货物处理的效率提高很多。40年前，出口和进口的过程涉及许多处理环节，部分货物有在途中被损坏或被盗的风险。集装箱塔吊的发明避免了在装卸环节船只的倾覆，而且集装箱的标准化使得几乎任何大小的箱子都可以装船。到1967年，船体装散货，甲板装集装箱的两用货船巳经被一次能载数千箱子的全集装箱船所替代。

DCountries still trade disproportionately with their geographic neighbours. Over time, however, world output has shifted into goods whose worth is unrelated to their size and weight. Today, it is finished manufactured products that dominate the flow of trade, and, thanks to technological advances such as lightweight components, manufactured goods themselves have tended to become lighter and less bulky. As a result, less transportation is required for every dollar's worth of imports or exports.

H 运输集装箱的使用把海洋运输变成一个高效的竞争激烈的行业。但是把货物装上和卸下码头可就不同了。各国政府总的来说更严格地控制卡车和道路税，这是比起对海运的收费而言。然而，自从20世纪70年代中期美国政府开始改革运输业各项规定时起，这种情况发生了改变。首先是航空业，然后是道路和铁路都从运送品种、地点和价格的严格限制中解放出来。结果生产率有了大幅提高。例如在1985年到1996年间，美国铁路系统就大幅裁员、减少车皮和车头的动用，但是增加了运货的总量。欧洲也出现了仅次于美国的显著的生产率提高。

I 美国运输系统的生产率提高已接近尾声，但在其他许多国家还要继续。航空和铁路的国有、对运费的管制以及对反竞争活动如货物处理垄断的容忍都造成了不必要的运输高成本，妨碍了国际贸易。降低这些壁垒会使各国经济联系更加紧密。

ETo see how this influences trade, consider the business of making disk drives for computers. Most of the world's disk-drive manufacturing is concentrated in South-east Asia. This is possible only because disk drives, while valuable, are small and light and so cost little to ship. Computer manufacturers in Japan or Texas will not face hugely bigger freight bills if they import drives from Singapore rather than purchasing them on the domestic market. Distance therefore poses no obstacle to the globalisation of the disk-drive industry.

FThis is even more true of the fast-growing information industries. Films and compact discs cost little to transport, even by aeroplane. Computer software can be 'exported' without ever loading it onto a ship, simply by transmitting it over telephone lines from one country to another, so freight rates and cargo-handling schedules become insignificant factors in deciding where to make the product. Businesses can locate based on other considerations, such as the availability of labour, while worrying less about the cost of delivering their output.

GIn many countries deregulation has helped to drive the process along. But, behind the scenes, a series of technological innovations known broadly as containerisation and inter-modal transportation has led to swift productivity improvements in cargo-handling. Forty years ago, the process of exporting or importing involved a great many stages of handling, which risked portions of the shipment being damaged or stolen along the way. The invention of the container crane made it possible to load and unload containers without capsizing the ship and the adoption of standard container sizes allowed almost any box to be transported on any ship. By 1967, dual-purpose ships, carrying loose cargo in the hold* and containers on the deck, were giving way to all-container vessels that moved thousands of boxes at a time.

HThe shipping container transformed ocean shipping into a highly efficient, intensely competitive business. But getting the cargo to and from the dock was a different story. National governments, by and large, kept a much firmer hand on truck and railroad tariffs than on charges for ocean freight. This started changing, however, in the mid-1970s, when America began to deregulate its transportation industry. First airlines, then road hauliers and railways, were freed from restrictions on what they could carry, where they could haul it and what price they could charge. Big productivity gains resulted. Between 1985 and 1996, for example, America's freight railways dramatically reduced their employment, trackage, and their fleets of locomotives - while increasing the amount of cargo they hauled. Europe's railways have also shown marked, albeit smaller, productivity improvements.

IIn America the period of huge productivity gains in transportation may be almost over, but in most countries the process still has far to go. State ownership of railways and airlines, regulation of freight rates and toleration of anti-competitive practices, such as cargo-handling monopolies, all keep the cost of shipping unnecessarily high and deter international trade. Bringing these barriers down would help the world's economies grow even closer.

* hold: ship's storage area below deck