Maersk Line, operator of the world’s biggest container fleet, this week announced plans for a very big ship indeed. The Danish company has ordered, from a South Korean yard, 10 vessels bigger than aircraft carriers that will carry vast quantities of Chinese-made goods from Asia to Europe.
全球最大的集装箱船队运营商马士基航运(Maersk Line)本周宣布，计划建造一批超大型船舶。这家丹麦公司从一家韩国造船厂订购了10艘比航空母舰还要大的船舶，用于把大量中国制造的货物从亚洲运往欧洲。
The missing party is the US, the country that not only invented the container shipping line industry in 1956, but is also the biggest national market for the iPods, shoes, car parts and foodstuffs that wend their way across the oceans from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Los Angeles. Yet the country that should, by heritage and size, be home to global shipping, is absent.
可惜这里找不到美国的身影。美国不仅在1956年缔造了集装箱航运产业，也是iPod、鞋、汽车零部件、食品等产品的最大国别市场，这些货物从深圳和上海飘洋过海，运抵洛杉矶。然而，这个无论从传统还是规模看、都应当引领全球航运业的国家，却在这里缺席了。
The two largest US-owned companies, Matson and Horizon Lines, occupy places 30 and 36 on Alphaliner’s table of container lines. Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping of Switzerland and CMA CGM Group of France are at the top, followed by others from Taiwan, Chile, Singapore, China, Japan, Germany and Korea. The US does better than that at World Cup soccer.
两家最大的美资公司，美森(Matson)和海天航运(Horizon Lines)，在Alphaliner的集装箱航运企业名单上分别位列第30和36位。马士基、瑞士的地中海航运(Mediterranean Shipping)和法国的达飞海运集团(CMA CGM Group)名列榜首，台湾、智利、新加坡、中国、日本、德国和韩国的航运公司紧随其后。美国在航运业的表现，只是比世界杯足球赛上略好一些。
There are few such clear examples of an entire industry being blighted by trade protectionism as the US merchant marine fleet. The 1920 Jones Act, intended to protect US ships and shipping from international competition (or war) has effectively wiped them off the high seas. The US Navy, still the biggest and most powerful fleet in the world, has no substantial commercial counterpart.
由于贸易保护主义导致整个行业的衰败，像美国船运业这样明显的例子尚不多见。1920年颁布的《琼斯法案》(Jones Act)本意是保护美国货船和航运业免受国际竞争（或战争）的冲击，结果却导致美国货轮在公海上销声匿迹。美国仍然拥有全球最强大的海军，但却没有与之对应的强大商业船队。
The UK, which imposed the first of the Navigation Acts to protect its ships from Dutch competition in the 17th century, abolished its equivalent of the Jones Act in 1849. Yet the US still insists that all domestic cargo must be carried in US ships made in US shipyards, crewed by US citizens. As a result, it has a small container fleet that expensively supplies Guam, Alaska and Hawaii.
虽然英国在17世纪为保护本国船只免受来自荷兰的竞争，最早颁布了《航海法案》(Navigation Acts)，但这部英国版的《琼斯法案》在1849年便已废止。而美国目前仍然要求，所有国内货物必须由本国造船厂制造的美国船只运输，船员也必须是美国公民。其结果是，美国集装箱航运业规模很小，只是以高昂的价格向关岛、阿拉斯加和夏威夷运送货物。
While US companies such as Boeing, General Electric, General Motors and Ford have built on a strong domestic market to compete globally in other forms of transport, Asian and European companies now dominate the world of shipping. Of the world’s 7,200 container ships in 2007, only 89 were US-registered compared with 1,250 European ships and 860 in Greater China, according to IHS Global Insight,
虽然波音(Boeing)、通用电气(General Electric)、通用汽车(General Motors)和福特(Ford)等美国公司依托强大的国内市场，在其他运输手段上参与全球竞争；但在航运业，亚洲和欧洲公司却占据着主导地位。环球通视(IHS Global Insight)数据显示，在全球7200艘集装箱货轮中，仅有89艘的注册地为美国，而欧洲有1250艘，大中华地区有860艘。
The irony is that container shipping – the innovation arguably most responsible for allowing trade globalisation by standardising the inefficient business of break-bulk cargo – was the brainwave of a US entrepreneur. In April 1956, Malcom McLean defied dockworkers’ unions by loading 58 containers on to the Ideal-X in Newark, New Jersey, and sailing to Houston, Texas.
而具有讽刺意味的是，集装箱航运——这一为了实现贸易全球化、而对效率低下的散装货物运输实施标准化的创新——正是美国企业家想出的点子。1956年4月，马尔科姆•麦克莱恩(Malcom McLean)不顾码头工人工会的反对，在新泽西州的纽瓦克向“理想-X号”(Ideal-X)装载了58个集装箱，随后驶往休斯顿。
The expense of ferrying containers in Jones Act ships and unloading at strictly-unionised ports means that most non-bulk cargo is now taken by road or rail instead. That has severely weakened the US industry – the two biggest US-owned lines, McLean’s Sea-Land and American President Lines, were acquired by Maersk and Neptune Orient Lines of Singapore in the 1990s (the US arm of Sea-Land became Horizon).
按照《琼斯法案》规定使用货轮运输集装箱、并在工会严格控制的码头卸货成本高昂，因此目前多数散货都通过公路或铁路运输。这严重削弱了美国的航运业，美国最大的两家航运公司——麦克莱恩创办的Sea-Land公司和美国总统航运公司(APL)——在20世纪90年代分别被马士基和新加坡东方海皇集团(Neptune Orient Lines)收购，Sea-Land美国分公司更名为海天航运(Horizon Lines)。
Maersk is building a ship about 310 times the size of the Ideal-X. Each of the Triple-E ships will hold 18,000 20ft equivalent container units (TEUs) when they go into service from 2013 and will be so large that they will not fit through even the enlarged Panama Canal. The Triple-Es will only be able to anchor at a few Asian, European and Gulf ports – no US port is big or efficient enough to cope.
马士基正在建造一艘尺寸约为理想-X号的310倍大的货船。这些3E级(Triple-E)船舶在2013年投入使用后，每艘可以装载1.8万个标准箱(TEU)，由于体积太大，甚至无法通过拓宽后的巴拿马运河。3E级船舶只能在亚洲、欧洲和海湾地区的一些港口停靠——美国港口要么规模不够大、要么效率太低，不具备接待能力。
Like the Airbus A380, the Triple-E is a bet on a future of large vessels travelling among giant hubs rather than smaller and more flexible vessels. Marc Levinson, author of The Box, a book on containers, argues that the economies of scale at sea could be undermined by the difficulty of loading and unloading fast enough. Even a 16,000 TEU ship fills the equivalent of 30 mile-long container trains.
像空客A380一样，建造3E级船舶实际上是在押注未来属于往来在各大枢纽港之间的大型船舶、而非更小更灵活的船舶。马克•列文森(Mark Levinson)在《集装箱改变世界》(The Box)一书中表示，海上航运的规模经济效应，会因为货物装卸不够快而受到影响。即使是容量为1.6万标准箱，相当于30英里长的集装箱火车的货轮也会受到影响。
Yet there is no US shipping line equivalent of Boeing (which is developing the smaller 787 to travel point-to-point) to challenge Maersk’s vision. The US container shipping fleet is an average of 25 years old and the newer alternatives to the Triple-E will be developed and manufactured elsewhere.
然而，美国船运业并没有相当于波音的企业（波音正在研发较小的787型飞机，用于点对点飞行），无法挑战马士基的愿景。美国的集装箱运输船队的平均历史为25年，3E级货轮更新的替代型号将在其它国家开发和建造。
The weakness of the US shipping line industry is a strange anomaly given the leading role of the US consumer and US companies in global trade. North America has 28 per cent of the world’s container fleet and companies such as Walmart and Apple have pioneered global supply chains.
考虑到美国消费者和企业在全球贸易中的领导地位，美国船运业的疲弱显得十分古怪。北美拥有全球28%的集装箱船队，而沃尔玛(Walmart)和苹果等公司也是全球供应链的先驱。
The growth of shipping shows no sign of halting, despite the 2009 downturn (the only recession in the container industry’s half-century history). The World Trade Organisation estimates that merchandise trade volumes rose by 13.5 per cent in 2010 after falling by 12.2 per cent in 2009, and China is rapidly extending new commercial trade routes between Asia, Africa and Latin America.
航运业的增长丝毫没有停顿的迹象，尽管2009年经历了低迷——这是集装箱运输业半个世纪以来唯一的一次衰退。世界贸易组织(WTO)估计，商品交易规模在2009年下降12.2%后，2010年上涨了13.5%，而中国正在亚洲、非洲和拉美快速拓展新的商业贸易路线。
“We believe that the way the world works is not going to change fundamentally. The benefits of trade are still there and we don’t expect European and US consumers to stop consuming,” says Soren Andersen, vice-president of ships for Maersk. That seems like a solid enough bet on globalisation, yet no US company is big enough to make it.
“我们相信，世界运转的方式不会发生根本性的改变。贸易的益处仍然存在，我们也不认为欧洲和美国消费者会停止消费。”马士基负责船队的副总裁索伦•安德森(Soren Andersen)表示。这似乎是对全球化一个可靠押注，而美国却没有一家足够大的公司能付诸行动。
Curiously in a country devoted to free enterprise, the Jones Act has not been seriously challenged – though Senator John McCain lived up to his “maverick” self-description last year by mooting its abolition. An alliance of shipping companies, trade unions and US shipyards has blocked liberalisation.
奇怪的是，在一个笃信自由企业的国家，为什么《琼斯法案》从未遭遇过严峻挑战？虽然约翰•麦凯恩(John McCain)参议员去年曾提议废止该法案——此举配得上他“特立独行”的自我判断——然而航运公司、工会和美国船厂却联合阻止了这一自由化举措。
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has sailed on.
值此之际，其他国家却扬帆猛进。
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