I Just Returned From China. We Are Not Winning.
By Steven Rattner
NYT Feb. 10, 2026
A few weeks ago, I attended a dinner in New York where the conversation quickly turned to China. Some of the most seasoned experts were sharply divided: some backed President Trump’s hard-line, aggressive stance, while others advocated for a less confrontational, more traditional approach.
I am no expert on trade, but I have made investments in China for years and had just returned from a weeklong visit. Eventually summoning my nerve, I suggested that neither approach would work. China is just too formidable as a rival — as well as a critical manufacturing powerhouse — to be reined in by diplomacy or an aggressive shift in policy. The only real solution is to get our house in order and beat China at its own game.
The need to do so is only growing, because the commotion of Mr. Trump’s first year back in office has set America back. In addition to manufacturing, China is threatening America’s pre-eminence in a range of fast-growing sectors, including artificial intelligence and pharmaceutical drug development. For all of Mr. Trump’s tariff bluster, we are not winning this trade war. The Asian goliath powers on as the world’s largest exporter, its trade surplus having notched a record $1.2 trillion last year. That overall increase suggests that many Chinese goods are simply passing through middleman countries before reaching U.S. shores. Tariffs or no, everybody needs Chinese goods.
Consider cars. During my trip, I toured Xiaomi, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer that has moved aggressively into electric vehicles. In the lobby sat a yellow sports car that could easily be mistaken for a Porsche. But the price tag was about $40,000, not $200,000. And the performance was just as good.
China’s progress in A.I. has been stunning. It has more than twice as much generating capacity as we do, and some of its data centers pay half as much as ours for power. That has helped it develop products like Manus, an A.I. agent comparable to ChatGPT, which was sold to Meta for more than $2 billion shortly after my visit.
I visited a robotics company where what looked like plastic children’s toys scampered across the floor, demonstrating the firm’s progress toward building humanoids that could replace humans in certain tasks.
China’s pharmaceutical industry is also surging. It now licenses more drugs to other countries than the United States does. And while Mr. Trump has sought to cut spending on vital government functions like basic research, China has made these areas national priorities.
Competing against China will be difficult under the best of circumstances. Clearly we need to rethink our industrial policy — the way we can deploy our government resources to support strategically important industries, which is our version of state-directed capitalism.
We also need to invest far more in our own infrastructure, education and workforce development. And we must stop demonizing China and start respecting it as a formidable competitor.
The bottom line is this: We cannot wish China away. We cannot tariff it into submission. We cannot negotiate it into irrelevance. The only way to prevail is to outcompete it. And that starts with fixing what’s broken at home.
中文译文
我刚从中国回来，我们没赢
史蒂文・拉特纳
NYT 2026 年 2 月 10 日
几周前，我在纽约参加了一场晚宴，话题很快就转向了中国。一些最资深的专家意见尖锐对立：有些人支持特朗普总统强硬、激进的立场，而另一些人则主张采取不那么对抗、更传统的做法。
我并非贸易专家，但多年来一直在中国投资，且刚刚结束了为期一周的访问。最终，我鼓起勇气提出，这两种方法都行不通。中国作为一个对手太过强大——同时也是至关重要的制造业强国——仅靠外交手段或激进的政策转变都无法遏制它。唯一真正的解决方案是整顿我们自己的内部事务，在其擅长的领域击败它。
这种需求正变得愈发迫切，因为特朗普重返总统职位第一年的种种乱象已经让美国倒退。除了制造业，中国还在人工智能和药物研发等一系列快速增长的领域威胁着美国的领先地位。尽管特朗普大肆宣扬关税政策，但我们并没有赢得这场贸易战。这个亚洲巨人继续作为世界最大出口国稳步前行，去年其贸易顺差创下了 1.2 万亿美元的历史纪录。这一整体增长表明，许多中国商品只是通过中转国然后抵达美国海岸。无论是否征收关税，人人都离不开中国商品。
以汽车为例。此行中，我参观了已大举进军电动汽车领域的电信设备制造商小米。大厅里停放着一辆黄色跑车，很容易被误认为是保时捷。但它标价约为 4 万美元，而非 20 万美元，性能却同样出色。
中国在人工智能领域的进展令人震惊。其算力是我们的两倍多，部分数据中心的电力成本仅为我们的一半。这助力其开发出了像 Manus 这样的产品 —— 一款可与 ChatGPT 媲美的人工智能代理，在我访问后不久，它就以超过 20 亿美元的价格被 Meta收购了。
我还参观了一家机器人公司，看起来像塑料儿童玩具的设备在地板上快速移动，展示了这家公司在研发可在特定任务中替代人类的人形机器人方面取得的进展。
中国的制药行业也在迅猛发展。如今，它向其他国家授权的药品数量超过了美国。当特朗普试图削减基础研究等重要政府职能的开支时，中国已将这些领域列为国家优先事项。
即使在最理想的情况下，与中国竞争也将十分艰难。显然，我们需要重新思考我们的产业政策 —— 即如何调配政府资源以支持具有战略意义的产业，这是美国版本的国家主导型资本主义。
我们还需要在自身的基础设施、教育和人力资本发展上投入更多资金。并且，我们必须停止妖魔化中国，开始将其视为一个强大的竞争对手予以尊重。
归根结底是这样：我们无法让中国消失，无法通过关税使其屈服，也无法通过谈判使其变得无足轻重。获胜的唯一途径是在竞争中超越它，而这首先要从修复国内的问题开始。
作者" bdsfid="370">史蒂文・拉特纳 现为纽约时报专栏作家，曾在奥巴马政府时期任财政部顾问
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