古诺特·瓦格纳、魏尚进：欧美应如何回应中国电动汽车补贴？

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■作者：古诺特·瓦格纳 哥伦比亚大学商学院的气候经济学家；魏尚进 复旦大学国际金融学院学术访问教授、哥伦比亚大学终身讲席教授、亚洲开发银行前首席经济学家

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美国财政部长耶伦正在对中国进行为期近一周的访问，这次访问很可能会集中讨论到美国对中国为电动汽车和其他清洁技术产品生产商提供补贴的关切。虽然廉价电动汽车的普及对地球环境和全球消费者来说都是好消息，但对西方车企的股东和员工来说却是坏消息，美国和欧盟都在考虑对中国电动汽车征收进口关税。但征收关税会是错误的做法。

图源：IC PHOTO

中国政府对电动汽车无论是在供应方面还是在需求方面进行补贴逻辑上是合理的。它们是将边做边学（learning by doing）内部化和规模化等正外部性（positive externality）的最佳选择，能够帮助生产者攀登学习曲线并降低成本曲线，从而超越市场本身所能提供的水平。这对于电池来说尤其如此，电池是电动汽车供应链的关键投入。虽然专利制度也为企业创新提供了至关重要的激励，但它却非常不完美。因为一个企业的研发可以为同行业的众多企业带来新的思路，带来生产力的提高， 从而具有积极的社会溢出效应，因此值得社会的支持。 

许多有针对性的需求补贴同样是合理的，因为在积极的边做边学和网络外部性的帮助下，它们加速了电动汽车的普及。一个重要的例子是政府对充电站的铺设的补贴。当然随着时间的推移，政策制定者应该逐步减少补贴，同时增加汽油税。

虽然中国电动汽车的成功吓坏了西方汽车制造商，但其中一些痛苦是他们自己造成的。由于这些西方车企在大型耗油车上押注太久，推迟了几乎不可避免的向电动汽车的转变。中国强大的制造业能力，加上政府的补贴与政策鼓励，让中国的电动汽车比欧美国家的车更便宜，在许多其他工业品上也有类似表现。

图源：凤凰网

在西方选举年里，为了回应当地汽车制造商，政客们大谈引入电动汽车关税可能会为选举创造有利条件。毕竟，向本国公民征税——包括通过征收碳税——在政治上是比较困难的，而向他国商品“征税”常常更受欢迎，那些对政府信任度较低的选民尤其会这么想。有一些关税，如欧洲的碳边界调整机制（CBAM），或许合理，因为它们针对碳排放的负外部性，但那些针对中国电动汽车或太阳能电池板等其他产品的关税却不合理，因为这些产品对全球绿色转型至关重要。

如果欧美想要对中国电动汽车采取某些行动的话，一个更好的做法是补贴自己国内的相关制造业，美国的《通胀削减法案》和《两党基础设施法》以及欧盟的部分补贴都反映了这种做法。这一些补贴可以被看成是一种政治上可行的、仅次于碳定价的“第二佳”选择，它们还可以为今后过渡到碳排放税的政策打下基础。

从“公共财政”的角度来看，关税可能更受政客们青睐：表面上看，关税带来政府收入，而补贴却需要花费纳税人的钱。但这种看法是目光短浅的。对《降低通胀法案》的早期分析显示，该法案数千亿美元的补贴提高了美国和其他地区的经济产出，无论是在最初十年政府支出期间还是之后。

欧洲某些汽车制造商已经意识到这一点，现在它们自己也开始呼吁用进一步的补贴来代替关税，寻求建立一个类似空客的跨国联盟来补贴欧洲电动汽车制造业。尽管任何补贴计划都可以引发了一系列棘手的政治经济和经济效率问题，但这种补贴肯定比电动汽车关税更可取。

用关税来威胁贸易伙伴国有时可以起到一个有用的作用，尤其是如果它像欧盟的CBAM一样，针对交易商品的碳含量，其明确目标是鼓励其他国家提高碳价格。鉴于中国制造业的碳强度，这样碳关税可以对美国尤其是欧盟的电动汽车制造商有所助益。但是，提高电动汽车价格并减少竞争的惩罚性关税会适得其反。一场补贴竞赛，加上更有力地为二氧化碳排放定价，远比一场关税争端要好得多。世界将因此变得更加富裕和清洁。

The Right Response to China's Electric-Vehicle Subsidies

Gernot Wagner

Climate Economist of Columbia Business School

Shang-Jin Wei

Editor-in-chief of Fudan Financial Review

Professor of Finance and Economics of Columbia University

Former Chief Economist of Asian Development Bank

图源：VEER

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s nearly week-long visit to China, now underway, will most likely focus on US concerns about Chinese subsidies to producers of electric vehicles (EVs) and other clean-tech goods. While the availability of cheap EVs is good news for the planet and for consumers everywhere, it is bad news for shareholders and employees of Western car companies, and both the United States and the European Union are considering imposing import tariffs on Chinese EVs. But tariffs are the wrong approach.

EVs are superior to ICE (internal combustion engine) cars in many ways. They are the world’s best hope for decarbonizing passenger vehicles, short of moving away from cars altogether. By providing crucial energy storage capacity for the electric grid, they are indirectly helpful to electricity generation using solar or wind power,  thereby aiding broader decarbonization efforts, which in turn will cut EVs’ carbon footprint further. And their faster acceleration and smoother ride underpinned the early success of Tesla and other high-end EVs.

That first-mover advantage has since dissipated. Tesla has lost 30% of its market value since January, struggling to keep up with BYD and other much cheaper Chinese competitors. That, too, is good news for the climate. Chinese oil demand is likely to have peaked last year, according to China’s state oil company. The reason is obvious: EVs and hybrids now account for over 40% of new car sales, twice the global share.

Some of the Chinese government's EV subsidies are justified, both on the supply and the demand sides. They can represent the best option for internalizing positive learning-by-doing and scale externalities, and for helping producers climb the learning curve and slide down the cost curve beyond what the market would deliver on its own. That is especially true for batteries, a key input in the EV supply chain. The patent system provides crucial incentives for private innovation, but it does so highly imperfectly. Research and development by one firm or one individual can benefit many firms in the same and related industries in the form of better ideas and higher productivity. This positive social spillover makes it deserving of taxpayers' support.

Targeted demand subsidies are similarly justified, because they speed up EV adoption, helped by positive learning-by-doing and network externalities. The latter calls for direct support for an increase in the number of charging stations, itself deserving of direct subsidies (though over time, policymakers should phase down subsidies and instead increase gasoline taxes).

While the success of Chinese EVs has spooked Western car manufacturers, some of the pain is self-inflicted. Having bet on massive gas-guzzlers for too long, they delayed the all-but-inevitable switch to EVs. But that’s not all: Chinese EVs are cheaper for the same reason that most everything manufactured in China tends to be cheaper than American or European products.

Introducing EV tariffs in response to intense lobbying by Western car manufacturers might make for good election-year politics. After all, taxing one's own citizens – including via carbon taxes – is politically difficult, while "taxing" others is sometimes viewed more favorably, especially by those with lower trust in government. But while some tariffs, like Europe's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), are eminently justifiable, because they specifically address the negative carbon externality, those aimed at Chinese EVs or other products such as solar panels, which are crucial for the global green transition, are not.

A much better idea is to subsidize domestic manufacturing, an approach reflected in the US Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and in targeted EU subsidies. Some of these subsidies can be justified simply as a politically feasible, second-best alternative to carbon pricing, including as a steppingstone toward carbon pricing policies.

Tariffs may be preferred on “public finance” grounds: they generate government revenues, while subsidies cost taxpayers money. But that calculus is shortsighted. Early analyses of the Inflation Reduction Act show that its hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of subsidies raise economic output in the US and elsewhere, both during and after the initial decade of government spending.

Some European car manufacturers have realized this and are themselves now calling for further subsidies in lieu of tariffs, seeking an Airbus-like, cross-country alliance to subsidize European EV manufacturing. While any subsidy scheme is messy and raises a host of thorny political-economy and economic-efficiency questions, such subsidies are surely preferable to EV tariffs.

The threat of tariffs can serve a useful purpose, especially if, like the EU's CBAM, it is aimed at the carbon content of traded goods, with the explicit goal being to encourage higher carbon prices elsewhere. Given the carbon intensity of Chinese manufacturing, such carbon tariffs alone could give a boost to US and especially EU EV manufacturers. But a punitive tariff that raises the prices of EVs and reduces competition is counterproductive. A subsidy race, together with stronger efforts at pricing CO2 emissions, is vastly superior to a tariff war. The world will be both richer and cleaner for it.

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