美国国债超过21万亿，特朗普是不是又头大了？

Donald Trump is pitching, as only Donald Trump can pitch, that a major economic revival is energizing America for a new run at greatness, and that he’s the straw stirring the elixir. In one representative recent tweet, the President declared, “Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better?…?Our country is WINNING again!”

唐纳德.特朗普宣称，也只有唐纳德.特朗普能够如是宣称，美国经济的强劲复苏正在推动美国走向新的辉煌，而他正是这一切的促成者。这位总统在最近一篇具有代表性的推文中断言，“如今，我们的经济一片繁荣，而且，得益于我所做的一切，美国经济定会扶摇直上……美国即将再次立于不败之地！”

Trump’s heady economic potion, however, is masking misguided policies that could leave those same businesses with a severe hangover from today’s celebration. The U.S. government’s huge and growing budget deficits have become gargantuan enough to threaten the great American growth machine. And Trump’s policies to date-a combination of deep tax cuts and sharp spending increases-are shortening the fuse on that fiscal time bomb, by dramatically widening the already unsustainable gap between revenues and outlays. On our current course, we’re headed for a morass of punitive taxes, puny growth, and stagnant incomes for workers-a future that’s the precise opposite of what Trump champions.

然而，特朗普令人目眩神迷的经济补剂将掩盖那些错误的政策，从而让这些企业在一时的欢愉之后出现严重的后遗症。美国政府大量不断增长的预算赤字已成为了一个庞然大物，足以威胁伟大的美国增长机器。同时，特朗普到目前为止祭出的大幅税收削减和开支剧增的组合政策，将大幅扩大收支之间不可持续的鸿沟，并缩短财政定时炸弹的导火索。按照当前的态势，等待我们的将是充斥着惩罚性税收、增长乏力和工人薪资停滞不前的乱摊子，与特朗普所宣称的未来恰恰相反。

By 2028, America’s government debt burden could explode from this year’s $15.5 trillion to a staggering $33 trillion-more than 20% bigger than it would have been had Trump’s agenda not passed. At that point, interest payments would absorb more than $1 in $5 of federal revenue, crippling the government’s ?capacity to bolster the economy, and constraining the private sector too. Contrary to the claims of the President and his supporters, the U.S. can’t grow fast enough to shed this burden; indeed, Trump’s agenda on immigration and trade looks likely to stunt that growth. (More on that later.) “This is almost like climate change,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It doesn’t do you in this year, or next year, but you’ll see the ill effects in a day of reckoning.”

到2028年，美国政府债务负担可能会从今年的15.5万亿美元激增至33万亿美元，对比特朗普的减税法案未得到通过的未来债务水平，增幅超过了20%。到那时，利息支出将消耗超过20%的联邦收入，政府也就无力促进经济发展，并控制私营领域。与总统和其支持者的声称背道而驰的是，美国经济的增速还达不到摆脱这一债务负担的水平；不但如此，特朗普在移民和贸易方面的举措看起来可能会对经济增长起反作用。（下文会详细说明。）穆迪分析的首席经济师马克.赞迪表示，“此举就像是气候变化一样。短时间内看不到什么影响，但一旦那一天真的来临，人们才能真正认识到这些政策的弊端。”

Of course, America’s fiscal picture was becoming unsustainable well before Trump took office. What’s astounding is how much worse his tax cuts and spending increases have rendered the outlook, and how quickly.

当然，美国财政格局远在特朗普上任之前便失去了其可持续性。不过，真正令人感到震惊的是，特朗普的税收削减和开支增加政策竟会让这一格局的前景变得如此的暗淡，而且是如此地迅速。