自然段A

International trade is growing at a startling pace. 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.

自然段A

国际贸易正以惊人的速度增长。尽管全球经济每年增长率略高于3％，但贸易量的复合年增长率约为其两倍。从肉类到机械，外国产品在世界上几乎每个经济体中扮演着更重要的角色，外国市场如今吸引着那些过去从未太担心国外销售的企业。

自然段B

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.

自然段B

是什么导致了国际商务的这一爆炸式增长？贸易壁垒普遍下降，如关税和进口配额等，无疑是其中一个解释。传统上一直是二流角色的国家经济开放是另一个原因。但是，推动进出口激增的力量却几乎被忽视了：将商品运送到市场的成本迅速下降。理论上，在贸易世界中，运输成本并不重要。假设一旦商品生产出来，就能立即、零成本地从一个地方转移到另一个地方。然而，现实世界充满了各种摩擦。廉价劳动力可能使中国服装在美国具有竞争力，但如果发货延误导致资金周转受阻，导致冬季外套在春季才到货，贸易可能失去其优势。

自然段C

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.

自然段C

在20世纪之交，农业和制造业几乎是几乎所有地方最重要的两个部门，德国、意大利和法国的总产出约占70％，美国、英国和日本约为40-50％。因此，国际贸易主要以原材料（如小麦、木材和铁矿石）或加工商品（如肉类和钢铁）为主导。但是这些产品都又重又大，运输成本相对较高。

自然段D

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.

自然段D

各国与其地理邻国之间的贸易仍然不成比例。然而，随着时间的推移，世界产出转向价值与其体积和重量无关的商品。如今，制成品主导着贸易流动，而且由于轻量化零部件等技术进步，制造产品本身也变得更轻、更不占空间。因此，每一美元的进口或出口所需的运输量较少。

自然段E

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.

自然段E

要了解这如何影响贸易，请考虑制造电脑硬盘的业务。全球大多数硬盘生产集中在东南亚地区。这仅是因为硬盘虽然具有较高的价值，但体积小、重量轻，所以运输成本很低。无论日本或德克萨斯的电脑制造商是否从新加坡进口硬盘，他们都不会面临巨大的运费，相较于在国内市场购买。因此，距离对于硬盘行业的全球化并不构成障碍。

自然段Ｆ

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.

自然段Ｆ

在快速增长的信息产业中，这一点更为明显。电影和光盘的运输成本很低，即使是通过飞机运输也是如此。计算机软件可以通过电话线从一个国家传输到另一个国家而“出口”，因此货运费率和货物处理时间表在决定产品制造地点时变得不重要。企业可以根据其他考虑因素选择地点，如劳动力的可用性，同时不太担心交付产品的成本。

自然段G

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 intermodal 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.

自然段G

在许多国家，解除管制推动了这一过程。但是，在幕后，被广泛称为集装箱化和联运运输的一系列技术创新推动了货物处理的迅速提高生产率。40年前，出口或进口涉及许多处理阶段，其中有损坏或盗窃的风险。集装箱起重机的发明使得可以在不倾覆船只的情况下装卸集装箱，并且标准集装箱尺寸的采用使得几乎任何一种箱子都可以在任何一艘船上运输。到1967年，装载杂货于货舱并在甲板上载运集装箱的双用途船正在被能一次运输数千个集装箱的全集装箱船取代。

自然段H

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.

自然段H

集装箱将海洋运输变成了一个高效、竞争激烈的业务。但是，将货物运送到码头以及从码头运送货物的情况却不同。与对海运费用的管制相比，国家政府普遍对卡车和铁路运费保持更严格的控制。然而，这种情况开始改变于20世纪70年代中期，当美国开始放松对其交通行业的管制时。先是航空公司，然后是公路货运公司和铁路公司，被解除了对其所能运输物品、运输范围以及所能收费的限制。这带来了巨大的生产率提高。例如，在1985年至1996年的时间段内，美国的货运铁路大幅减少了就业人数、铁轨数量和机车队伍，同时增加了所运输的货物数量。欧洲的铁路系统也显示出明显的生产率改善，虽然规模较小。

自然段I

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.

自然段I

在美国，运输领域的巨大生产率提高可能已接近尾声，但在大多数国家中，这个过程还有很长的路要走。国有铁路和航空公司、货运费率的管制以及对反竞争行为（如货物处理垄断）的容忍，都使得运输成本不必要地高昂，并阻碍了国际贸易的发展。取消这些障碍将有助于世界经济更加紧密地增长。