The vast expansion in the international trade owes much to a revolution in the business of moving freight
货运运输业务的改革很大程度上导致了国际贸易的大规模扩张
International trade is growing at a startling pace（astonishing/surprising）. 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.
国际贸易正在以令人惊异的速度增长着。当全球经济增长速度略高于3的时候，贸易量每年的递增率约为其二倍。从肉类到机器设备，外国产品在世界范围内的每一个经济体中都有着更重要的地位，并且外国市场现在吸引了产品贸易，这些产品不用过多担心在国界以外的销售额。
What 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.
在国际经济膨胀的背后是什么呢？（是什么原因导致了国际经济的膨胀）。例如关税和进口配额等贸易壁垒在全球范围内的减少无疑是一种解释。但是在进出口迅速增长背后有一个原因贯穿始终但是并未引起注意：将货物运向市场的费用在迅速减少。理论上来讲，在世界贸易中，海运费用并不昂贵。货物一旦被生产出来，就被假设持续不断地零成本从一个地方到另一个地方。然而，在现实世界中充满了阻力。廉劳动力使得中国的服装相比于美国的更具有竞争力，但是如果运货过程的拖延使得流动资金被套牢并导致冬季的衣服在春天才运到，那么服装贸易就毫无优势可言了。
At 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.
在20世纪初（世纪之交），农业和手工制造业在任何地方都是两个最重要的产业，约占德国、意大利、法国70%的产出和美国、英国、日本40-50%的产出。国际经济因此由原材料所主导，比如小麦、木头和铁矿石或者浅加工商品比如肉和钢铁。但是这类型产品都很体积庞大并且笨重很多因此他们的运输费用相当之高。
Countries 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.
各国仍然不成比例地和他们地缘上的邻国进行贸易。然而，随着时间流逝，世界各国的产出都转化了价值与产品大小和重量无关的产品。今天，在贸易流程中占主导地位的是制成品。并且多亏了技术进步比如轻质量部件，加工品有越来越轻小的趋势。结果就是，每一美元价值的进出口需要的运输费用更低。
To 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.
为了了解这些是如何影响贸易的，我们可以观察为计算机制造磁盘的产业。大多数的磁盘制造都集中在东南亚。这可能仅仅是因为磁盘小而有价值所以海运费用十分低廉。在日本或者德克萨斯州的电脑制造商并不会面临高昂的货物运输费用如果他们从新加坡进口磁盘而不是从本地市场购买磁盘。因此距离不会成为全球化的磁盘制造企业的障碍。
This 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.
这一点在迅速增长的信息产业中更加真实。电影和激光唱片的运输费用即使是用空运也很低。电脑软件可以不用任何装货就出口，仅仅通过电话线从一个国家就可以传输到另一个国家，所以运费率和货物装载日程将不会成为决定产品产地的重要因素。企业可以考虑其他因素决定产地，比如劳动力而不是考虑运输产品的费用。
In 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.
在许多国家，放宽政策管制帮助推动了这个过程。但是在这些之后，一系列广为人知的技术创新如集装箱和联合运输已经引起了在货物装载方面流动生产力的提高。四十年前，进出口过程涉及操作的很多阶段，这就增大了货船损毁和中途货物被偷的风险。集装箱吊车的发明使得集装箱的装卸不会使得货船倾翻，标准的集装箱大小使得任何集装箱可以通过任何船来运输输。在1967年之前，在甲板上可以放置未被捆扎的货物和集装箱这种两用的船曾一度不如那些满装集装箱的船。
The 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.
海运集装箱使得海运变成一种高效极富竞争力的业务。但是让货物进出船坞又是完全不同的事情。总体上来说，国家的政府对陆运和火车运输的把控比海洋运输更为严格。然而这在十九世纪七十年代开始改变，美国开始放宽对运输产业的政策。第一条航线，然后是陆运和铁路，从受限的货物运输类别，货物运输地点和货物运输价格中解放出来。比如，在1985到1996年期间，美国的货运铁路戏剧般地减少了雇员数量，运输里程，和火车头——然而他们所运输的货物却增加了。欧洲的铁路也显示出明显的、即便相对较小的产量增长。
In 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.
在美国在运输业上大量生产力的增加也许几乎结束了，但是在大多数国家这一过程仍有很长的路要走。国有铁路和航线，对运费率的管理和对反竞争行为的容忍，比如货物装载垄断，这些都使得船运的价格不必要的提高并且阻碍国际贸易。减少这些障碍会帮助世界经济变得更加紧密。