In a majority of industries they are growing more slowly and are less profitable than local firms that stayed in their backyard. The share of global profits accounted for by multinationals has fallen from 35% a decade ago to 30% now. For many industrial, manufacturing, financial, natural-resources, media and telecoms companies, global reach has become a burden, not an advantage. 

That is because a 30-year window of arbitrage is closing. Firms’ tax bills have been massaged down as low as they can go; in China factory workers’ wages are rising. Local firms have become more sophisticated. They can steal, copy or displace global firms’ innovations without building costly offices and factories abroad. From America’s shale industry to Brazilian banking, from Chinese e-commerce to Indian telecoms, the companies at the cutting edge are local, not global. 

arbitrage：鞘取り
tax bills：税金の支払い
sophisticated：洗練された
cutting edge：最先端・優位

The changing political landscape is making things even harder for the giants. Mr Trump is the latest and most strident manifestation of a worldwide shift to grab more of the value that multinationals capture. China wants global firms to place not just their supply chains there, but also their brainiest activities such as research and development. Last year Europe and America battled over who gets the $13bn of tax that Apple and Pfizer pay annually. From Germany to Indonesia rules on takeovers, antitrust and data are tightening. 

landscape：全般的状況
strident ：自己主張の強い
manifestation：感情の表れ
brainiest：聡明な

Mr Trump’s arrival will only accelerate a gory process of restructuring. Many firms are simply too big: they will have to shrink their empires. Others are putting down deeper roots in the markets where they operate. General Electric and Siemens are “localising” supply chains, production, jobs and tax into regional or national units. Another strategy is to become “intangible”. Silicon Valley’s stars, from Uber to Google, are still expanding abroad. Fast-food firms and hotel chains are shifting from flipping burgers and making beds to selling branding rights. But such virtual multinationals are also vulnerable to populism because they create few direct jobs, pay little tax and are not protected by trade rules designed for physical goods. 

gory：生々しい
flipping burgers：ファストフードレストランで働く
branding rights：ブランド構築の財産

Taking back control
The retreat of global firms will give politicians a feeling of greater control as companies promise to do their bidding. But not every country can get a bigger share of the same firms’ production, jobs and tax. And a rapid unwinding of the dominant form of business of the past 20 years could be chaotic. Many countries with trade deficits (including “global Britain”) rely on the flow of capital that multinationals bring. If firms’ profits drop further, the value of stockmarkets will probably fall. 

Taking back：取り戻す
bidding：人のいいなりになる
unwinding：巻き戻し・調整

What of consumers and voters? They touch screens, wear clothes and are kept healthy by the products of firms that they dislike as immoral, exploitative and aloof. The golden age of global firms has also been a golden age for consumer choice and efficiency. Its demise may make the world seem fairer. But the retreat of the multinational cannot bring back all the jobs that the likes of Mr Trump promise. And it will mean rising prices, diminishing competition and slowing innovation. In time, millions of small firms trading across borders could replace big firms as transmitters of ideas and capital. But their weight is tiny. People may yet look back on the era when global firms ruled the business world, and regret its passing. 

immoral：不道徳な
exploitative：搾取的な
aloof：冷淡な
demise：終了

多国籍企業の利益がだんだん減ってきて、グローバルの利益に占める割合は３０％になってしまった。この３０年で世界の経済の事情が中国に賃金のように大きく変わってきた。トランプ政権になってアメリカの雇用を促進しようとして、こうした企業をやり玉に挙げているので、ますます、多国籍企業は衰退して行ってしまうだろう。そうなると今までそれに恩恵を受けていた消費者は高いものを買わされる羽目になるだろう。アメリカ国内の雇用な多国籍企業のアメリカ回帰を強制しても雇用な増えない。いずれ、後悔することになるだろう。

トランプの言っているアメリカの雇用を増やすために、海外の工場をアメリカに戻す政策は馬鹿げている。なぜアメリカの雇用が減ったのかの原因はそこにはないからだ。海外に工場を作るのはアメリカの工場が採算が取れないからだ。企業の利益にマイナスになることを企業に強制してもその効果はありえない。多国籍企業で元気のいいのはIT関連だけだが、本来そうした企業はグローバルビジネスを国家が支援して成り立つのだが、アメリカはそれに反した方向に動いているようだ。

水曜日。今日はいつも会食があって、水道橋カツ吉だ。夜は海野塾がある。７３１部隊とフィリピン、ビルマ、シンガポールのWWllの話をする。WWllはもうそろそろ終わりにしたい。では、また明日。