Two years ago, the American business community made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump: give us tax cuts, and we will support your administration. Now the US president is having his due. His trade war with China has turned into what looks to be a serious and possibly permanent breakdown in relations between the world’s superpowers. Tariffs have turned into retaliatory tariffs. Supply chains are shifting. Markets are turning. Within all this change, multinational companies, which have arguably been the biggest financial beneficiaries of globalisation since the second world war, have the most to lose.
兩年前，美國商界與唐納•川普(Donald Trump)達成了一項浮士德式的交易(Faustian bargain)：給我們減稅，我們就支持你的政府。現在，這位美國總統得到了他應得的東西。他與中國的貿易戰似乎已演變爲世界超級大國之間一種嚴重、甚至可能是永久性的關係破裂。關稅已變成報復性關稅。供應鏈正在發生轉變。市場也正在轉變。在所有這些變化中，跨國公司的損失最爲慘重，而跨國公司可以說是二戰以來全球化最大的經濟受益者。