(What’s Left of) Our Economy: What a U-Turn for the U.S. Trade Deficit!

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, expansion, exports, Federal Reserve, GDP, goods trade, gross domestic product, imports, inflation, manufacturing, non-oil goods trade deficit, pandemic, recession, services trade, supply chains, Trade, trade deficit, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As this morning’s stunning official U.S. international trade figures (for November) made clear, the CCP Virus pandemic really wasn’t over yet near the end of last year – at least when it came to China. The steep monthly drop in the November overall trade gap stemmed largely from the Chinese dictatorship’s erratic response to a new tidal wave of virus cases. Beijing at first ordered a series of new shutdowns in numerous major cities, and then abruptly tried reversing course following widespread protests from an outraged and pandemic-and lockdown-exhausted Chinese citizenry.

The resulting turmoil and confusion depressed the Chinese economy – including the export-focused sectors that had led the country to serve as the “world’s factory.”

At the same time, the renewed disruption of China-centric global supply chains only accounted for a little less than half of the November U.S. trade balance’s sequential improvement. And at least as strikingly, the combined goods and services shortfall cratered even though by most accounts the U.S. economy’s growth accelerated late last year. More surprising still, growth appears to have sped up in November – and during the rest of the quarter – even as imports fell off the table.

As known by RealityChek regulars, it’s been rare for the deficit to tumble when the gross domestic product (GDP – the standard measure of the economy’s size) increases, and largely because American expansion typically means that both U.S. consumers and businesses are stepping up their historically robust importing. Much more common are deficit drops mainly due to the economy sagging and this importing tailing off.

As the U.S. recession during the first half of last year came to an end, America’s trade performance racked up a short winning streak during which the trade gap shrank and – even better – exports increased and imports decreased. That’s “even better” because an economy that’s importing less and exporting more is one that’s growing less because of borrowing and spending and more because of producing.  Early in the third quarter, though, the return of growth seemed to start reproducing the standard pattern during which rising imports boosted the deficit.

November’s results sharply reversed that latest trend – to put it mildy. The overall deficit sank month-to-month in November by a whopping 20.93 percent. That’s the biggest fall-off since February, 2009’s (26.85 percent), when the economy was still mired in the Great Recession triggered by the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08. And the $61.51 billion level (down from October’s $77.85 billion) is the lowest monthly figure since the $59.11 billion in September, 2020, when the economy was recovering from the first CCP Virus wave.

Total exports were off sequentially in November, but only by two percent, from $256.996 billion to $251.864 billion. That was the third straight decline, the biggest since January’s 2.01 percent, and the lowest monthly figure since April’s $244.230 billion. But given the sluggishness of the rest of the global economy, and the unusually level of the U.S. dollar then (which undermines the price competitiveness of U.S.-origin goods and services at home and abroad), this decrease seems pretty modest.

The bigger move by far was in total imports, which plunged by 6.41 percent, from $334.843 billion to $313.374 billion. The decrease was the biggest in percentage terms since the 13.16 percent nosedive of April, 2020, when the pandemic and its economic effects were at their worst in the United States.

The China effect was certainly a huge contributor. The U.S. goods gap with the People’s Republic (country-specific services data take much longer to release) slumped by fully 26.23 percent, from $28.87 billion to $21.30 billion. This $7.57 billion difference represented 46.33 percent of the $16.34 billion monthly improvement in the total trade deficit in November. For good measure, the sequential plunge was the greatest since the 38.93 percent nosedive of February, 2020 (when China was still struggling with the first virus outbreak), and the monthly total the lowest since April, 2020’s $22.30 billion.

And goods imports from China fell sequentially in November by $7.70 billion, from $44.57 billion to $36.88 billion. That decrease of 17.27 percent was steepest since the 31.47 percent collapse in February, 2020, and the monthly total the most modest since March, 2020’s $19.64 billion.

But as a result, more than half of the spectacular monthly drop in the November combined goods and services deficit came from other trade flows, as did 64.13 percent of the month’s total import decline of $21.47 billion.

More evidence that the monthly trade shortfall’s decrease was spurred by much more than China’s troubles: The U.S..global non-oil goods trade gap, the closest proxy to U.S.-China goods trade, was off by $15.21 billion on a monthly basis in November (more than twice the amount of the $7.57 billion decline in the U.S.-China deficit). And non-oil goods imports tumbled by $19.87 billion month-to-month in November – some two and a half times the amount of the $7.70 billion drop in goods imports from China.

In other noteworthy November trade developments, the U.S. goods deficit drooped by 15.44 percent on month, from $99.40 billion to $84.05 billion. That figure is the lowest since December, 2020’s $83.20 billion and the decrease the biggest relatively speaking since the 20.79 percent in Great Recession-y February, 2009.

The long-time surplus in services, the biggest sector of the U.S. economy, and a cluster of industries hit especially hard by the pandemic and its resulting economic damage, rose 4.60 percent, from $21.55 billion to $22.54 billion.  That monthly total was the highest since February, 2021’s $23 billion.

The November slippage in goods exports of 3.03 percent, from $176.16 billion to $170.82 billion, was the largest in percentage terms since the 3.34 percent of September, 2021.

Goods imports dropped 7.51 percent, from $275.56 billion to $254.87 billion. That total was the lowest since October, 2021’s $243.85 billion and the percentage decline the greatest since the 12.79 percent in pandemic-y April, 2020.

Services exports inched up by just 0.26 percent sequentially in November, but the $81.05 billion total was the eighth straight record, and the monthly advance the tenth in a row.

The huge, chronic trade deficit in manufacturing sank from $134.73 billion in October to $115.72 billion, with that November level the best since February’s $106.49 billion – when the last economic downturn had begun. And the sequential retreat of 14.11 percent was the greatest since the 23.09 percent in Great Recession-y February, 2020.

Manufacturing exports were down 4.71 percent on month, from $110.44 billion to $105.24 billion, and manufacturing imports plummeted by 9.88 percent, from October’s $245.17 million (the second worst monthly total ever, behind March’s $256.18 billion), to $220.95 billion.

On a year-to-date basis, however, the manufacturing deficit of $1.3902 trillion has already passed last year’s annual record of $1.3298 trillion, and is running 15.49 percent ahead of the 2021 pace.

Even by CCP Virus-era standards, the November U-turn taken by the trade deficit has rendered the U.S. economic outlook awfully fuzzy. Economists seem pretty confident that the economy is headed for a recession soon, but the latest prominent forecast shows that growth heated up notably between last year’s third and fourth quarters. So if a downturn really is imminent, it’s going to come incredibly abruptly.

That should improve the trade deficit further. But what if the Federal Reserve chickens out and decides to halt or just pause its strategy of cooling inflation by slowing growth significantly because…it becomes clear that the tightening it’s already pursued has begun slowing growth? What if all the money Washington has put into consumers’ pockets continues to fuel robust spending – which tends to pull in more deficit-widening imports? But if so, how come growth has been so much better in the second half of the year even as Americans’ purchases from abroad now look like they’re tanking?

And will China finally get control over the pandemic, and return its economy to some semblance of normalcy?

The answers to those questions seem to be way above any mortal’s pay grade.  And although I’m in the “recession’s coming” camp, so far, the economy doesn’t seem to care.  As a result, I’ll be following the incoming trade and other economic data unusually closely – and with unusual humility.      

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Im-Politic: Why Delta Looks Like a Wave (in the Best Sense)

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Delta variant, health, Im-Politic, lockdowns, pandemic, public health, The New York Times, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, Washington Post, Wuhan virus

I hate to break up the CCP Virus panic party that’s been held lately due to the surge of the Delta variant in recent weeks.

Actually, as known by RealityChek readers, I don’t hate to break it up, since I’ve been writing that it doesn’t portend the end of days, or anything close – much less a development serious enough to justify a return to economic and behavioral curbs in the United States. But even I was surprised to see how strongly the U.S. data support my confidence that Delta’s a wave in the most encouraging sense: It’s something that’s going to come down about as fast as it went up, both nation-wide and state-wide. Moreover, contrary to the almost universal claims, differences in vaccination rates don’t seem to have much to do with these trends.

These conclusions are based on data showing recent changes in hospitalization rates in states that have seem to have been hardest hit by the overall national increase in recorded virus cases since late June. As I’ve pointed out, case numbers are a deeply flawed measure of the virus’ impact on the nation, largely because so many infections are asymptomatic or very mild. Therefore, such victims typically don’t bother to report them. By the same token, however, their prevalence indicates that the pandemic’s dangers to Americans generally speaking are limited.

Hospitalization rates suffer major flaws, too – mainly because of sloppy definitional practices – but they’re better than case numbers. And what the numbers make clear is that in handful of states widely described as the Delta and overall new wave epicenters (see, e.g., here and here), the hospitalization curve is bending down big time. That is, the weekly numbers of new hospitalizations have slowed dramatically.

Here are the actual figures, with the percentage changes new hospitalizations over the last two weeks shown on the left side (and based on The New York Times‘ interactive CCP Virus tracker) and the percentage changes over the last week shown on the right side (and based on the Washington Post‘s tracker). I needed to use two sources here because I couldn’t find a single source that presented all this information in one place.

U.S.:                      +90 percent            +34 percent

Florida:                +111 percent            +17 percent

Texas:                  +102 percent            +19 percent

Lousiana:             +136 percent            +32 percent

Arkansas:               +45 percent              +4 percent

Missouri:                +27 percent              +5 percent

Mississippi:          +166 percent            +26 percent

In addition, as well known by now, the full vaccination rates in all of these states have lagged the national average of about 50 percent as of today.

Florida:      49.6 percent

Texas:        44.5 percent

Lousiana:   37.6 percent

Arkansas:   37.6 percent

Missouri:    42.1 percent

More evidence of the relatively modest role played by the vaccines in slowing hospitalization rates can be seen in the below table presenting, as above, the changes in weekly hospitalizations over the last two weeks and over the last week for the ten states with the highest full vaccination rates (shown in parentheses).

                                   over the last two weeks            over last week

US (50.1 percent):              +90 percent                       +34 percent

Vermont (67.9 percent):    +577 percent                     +260 percent

Mass. (64.4 percent):          +78 percent                       +25 percent

Maine (64.2 percent):         +29 percent                          -8 percent

Connect. (63.9 percent):     +90 percent                       +14 percent

R.I. (62.1 percent):               -29 percent                      +89 percent

Maryland (59.5 percent):     +77 percent                      +23 percent

N.J. (59.0 percent):              +60 percent                      +14 percent

N.H. (58.6 percent):             +45 percent                     +13 percent

Wash. (58.6 percent):           +60 percent                     +21 percent

N.M. (57.8 percent):            +89 percent                     +23 percent

The first observation to be made is that nation-wide, the increase in hospitalizations has slowed significantly – for which everyone should be thankful. The second point worth noting is that the two week changes for the high- and low-vax states don’t differ to any great extent, though both display significant variation. And the third point I’d emphasize is that the slowdowns mostly have been much faster in the low-vax states. So since we’re examining all these states during the same timeframes, it’s difficult to understand the insistence that vaccination is so vital to stopping the spread. (Incidentally, I’d ignore the Vermont data, since the absolute numbers are so small.)

The only other explanation I can think of is that the high-vax states tend to be states that are densely populated, whereas the low-vax states are much less so. But logically, that would seem to argue most strongly for more energetic vaccine efforts to be made where people are most crowded together, not for villifying the vaccination laggard states (especially when, as in the cases of Florida and Texas, they’re not trailing by that much).

And nothing apparent about the Delta variant so far changes what’s been the most sensible formula for contending with the CCP Virus since the pandemic’s first (understandably) panicky months of 2020:  Don’t treat it like the nation’s only health problem, much less its only problem; don’t ignore its wave-like dynamics or its highly differentiated health effects; therefore keep social and economic life as normal as possible, and focus protective efforts (including vaccines) on the highly vulnerable.      

Making News: Breitbart Interview Podcast Now On-Line on the Virus and Economic Reopening

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Breitbart News Tonight, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, economy, John Binder, lockdown, Making News, pandemic, Rebecca Mansour, reopening, restart, shutdown, stay-at-home, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast of an interview last night on “Breitbart News Tonight” is now on-line. Click here and scroll down till you see my name for a timely, lively discussion with co-hosts Rebecca Mansour and John Binder on when and how the U.S. economy can reopen even as the CCP Virus pandemic continues.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Selective CCP Virus Finger-Pointing

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Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Dan Diamond, Daniel Lippman, Defense Production Act, DPA, George W. Bush, health security, healthcare goods, Im-Politic, Jessica Silverman-Greenberg, Mainstream Media, MSM, Nahal Toosi, National Security Council, Nicholas Kulish, pandemic, regulations, Sarah Kliff, The New York Times, Trump, ventilators, Wuhan virus

Mainstream Media accounts of the Trump administration’s CCP Virus response keep appearing emphasizing how lousy and lackadaisical it’s been compared with the federal response to potentially dangerous disease outbreaks during the Obama years – and especially given supposedly prescient pandemic warnings that the Obama-nauts sounded to their successors that allegedly were ignored.

So RealityChek is going to have to keep pointing out major flaws in these accounts that both reporters and their editors should have noted, and questions they should have asked.

Keep in mind, moreover, that today’s pushback comes on top of (1) this blog’s description of a 2011 Commerce Department report on America’s increasingly dangerous vulnerability to foreign cutoffs of vital healthcare goods that was completely ignored; and (2) a similar presentation of federal economic data making clear the nation’s healthcare security – another way to think of this vulnerability – has been weakening for at least two decades.

Let’s start with the article in today’s New York Times detailing how a George W. Bush administration plan continued under Barack Obama failed to plug what its public health officials viewed as “one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.” The effort entailed finding businesses willing to try to build ventilators that were cheaper, more portable, and easier to use than were then available, and then awarding the contract to the best proposal.

According to Times reporters Nicholas Kulish, Sarah Kliff, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg (and presumably their editors), the eventual failure mainly highlighted “the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.”

And although this point wasn’t made, the obvious message that the piece meant to send readers is that the President continues making a big mistake by not unleashing the full power of the Defense Production Act (DPA)– which creates vast government power to order whatever companies it wishes to make whatever products it considers necessary as quickly as possible, and to prioritize sales to Washington, not other customers. Underlying this position, of course, is the (completely ignorant) belief that this 1950 law (amended several times since) enables a Chief Executive to snap his fingers and instantly start assembly lines churning out ventilators and face masks and pharmaceuticals, etc.

But let’s leave aside this DPA fetishism. As I tweeted, the following sentence in the piece isn’t completely uninteresting given the unmistakable importance of quick results: After an initial failure (that shouldn’t be pinned on either of those two administrations), “The federal government started over with another company in 2014, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered.”

That doesn’t sound like the regulatory process reflected particular urgency – and clearly the problem extended into the Trump administration. But this business-as-usual attitude reigned even though, as the article noted, the ventilator project “came in the wake of a parade of near-miss pandemics: SARS, MERS, bird flu and swine flu.” In other words, evidence abounded that pandemics weren’t a rarity. Recently, they were becoming frequent. And still apparently no thought was given to any regulatory fast-tracking.

Finally in connection with this episode. It’s commendable that these pre-Trump public health officials tried to do something new. Less commendable, and less understandable, is why none of them recognized the foreign vulnerability problem and the offshoring-happy trade policies that fostered them.

Two other recent articles seeking to pin the blame for U.S. CCP Virus unpreparedness on Mr. Trump came out March 16 and March 25 in Politico. The first documented that on January 13, 2017 – seven days before the Trump inauguration – a team of outgoing Obama administration officials held a briefing for a team of incoming Trump-ers “intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis” – the distinct possibility that a major, deadly pandemic would sweep over the United States from abroad.

Further, the briefers specified that the new administration “could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount’….” Unfortunately, continued the article by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, the Trumpers seemed pretty apathetic. And that’s pretty damning, right?

In principle, yes. But why did the Politico staff bury this observation: “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today”? Because it would take much of the punch out of this supposed bombshell?

Also buried: An observation in the apparently actual briefing document that, when in terms of “U.S. hospital preparedness and response,” “State and local governments lead public health response.” That’s an important piece of the current American response – even though it’s been relentlessly portrayed in the press another example of the administration’s failure. And P.S. – this document said nothing about ensuring adequate national screening capability.

Politico wasn’t finished, however. Nine days later, it ran another piece – by two of the same reporters – charging that the Trump administration’s CCP Virus policies have “failed to follow” a detailed pandemic playbook prepared by the Obama National Security Council that, it seems, would have prevented much of the virus damage inflicted on the nation.

Again, it’s a plausible claim – although, like the first Politico piece, this article left out the development of the Trump administration’s own pandemic strategy by the fall of 2018 (which means that work on it throughout the federal government began months before).

Also, like the first article, it failed to pose these crucial questions: If the Obama pandemic specialists were so utterly convinced that a pandemic would strike sooner rather than later, and that Team Trump was falling down on the preparation job, why didn’t they alert Democrats in Congress, or Never Trumper Republicans? Certainly there’s been no shortage of lawmakers (especially Democrats) looking for any opportunity to slam the administration (especially if this activity could do some good).

Additionally, if these pandemic warriors did send their message to these lawmakers, why did the public hear so little about it?

My hunch: For three years, the Never Trumpers of both parties had much higher priorities. Think “Russia” and “impeachment.”

Im-Politic: The Latest Trump CCP Virus Fake News

Tags

Beth Cameron, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, ebola, Im-Politic, National Security Council, NSC, Obama administration, pandemic, Politico, Tim Morrison, TIME, Trump, Washington Post, WHO, World Health Organization, Wuhan virus

I’m getting sick and tired of debunking Mainstream Media myths spread about the Trump administration’s failures in dealing with the CCP Virus (as I have now taken to calling it, in honor of the Chinese Communist Party regime’s role in covering it up and thereby preventing timely responses all over the world). And maybe you’re getting sick and tired of reading them.

All the same, the attacks keep coming, and three in particular that have appeared in the last week – which happen to be closely related to each other – are screaming out for pushback.

Off the bat, though, some essential context: As I’ve tweeted repeatedly, I agree that the President’s anti-Wuhan Virus (another monicker I’ve been using) policy has been flawed. Chiefly, Mr. Trump does deserve criticism for claiming until recently that everything’s under control – although I can’t help but continuing to note that the World Health Organization (WHO) didn’t declare the situation to be a global pandemic until March 11. That’s a grand total of nine days ago.

In addition, testing of course took off way too slowly. I strongly suspect that this stemmed from outmoded guidelines and manufacturing processes at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that predated the Trump inauguration. But the buck in the U.S. government ultimately and rightly stops on the President’s desk, and a Chief Executive who’s described himself as a Can-do-type disrupter should have stopped the agency’s business-as-usual approach faster.

As for the broadsides with much less, if any, merit? The first concerns the claim that the administration foolishly abolished the National Security Council (NSC) office that it inherited from the Obama administration that focused on protecting the country from pandemics. This allegation, first made by that office’s first director, has been (to put it charitably) exposed as misleading by one of her NSC successors, Tim Morrison.

He’s explained that the office’s responsibilities were merged into a new office that looked at pandemics more holistically, because they’re closely related to challenges like those posed by weapons of mass destruction generally. And Morrison has contended – credibly – that thanks to various preparations made by this reorganized NSC, an Ebola outbreak was quashed quickly.

To be sure, as I’ve pointed out, the emergence of diseases in regions like Central Africa, which have scant connections with the global economy, and in places like China, which have extensive connections, pose dramatically different challenges. And I continue to think, as argued, that bureaucratic reforms involving such tiny government agencies are game-changers in real-world terms. But you’d think that the initial accuser, Beth Cameron, might consider apologizing. And that the Washington Post would acknowledge a huge fact-checking failure (though it did run the rejoinder).

What’s even less well known – and has gone even more scantily reported than the Morrison observations – is that Mr. Trump’s predecessors approved decisions that actually do look like genuine pandemic defense downgrades. According to this TIME magazine post:

“The Trump Administration has become the third White House in a row to downgrade or eliminate the senior White House personnel tasked with tracking disease and bioterrorism threats, according to Kenneth Bernard, a retired Rear Admiral and physician, who served as a special assistant to the president for security and health during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.”

TIME continues:

Bernard “served in the top role in the Clinton National Security Council, only to be ignored by the incoming George W. Bush Administration, which eliminated his special advisor position.

“But after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington spurred fears Al-Qaeda would follow up with a bioweapons attack, and the anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush Administration re-established the office, bringing Bernard back to serve as the first former Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense, as a subset of the White House’s Homeland Security Council (HSC), which later helped combat outbreaks of SARS and the Avian Influenza.”

And as for the Obama record:

“Under Obama’s NSC, Bernard says the office was downgraded again, until the 2014 Ebola crisis emerged, and President Barack Obama appointed ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain. National Security Advisor Susan Rice later institutionalized the office in 2015, calling it the Directorate for Global Health and Security and Biodefense.”

Not exactly a model of foresight.

The next two myths were propagated (and weirdly invalidated at the same time) by this supposed Politico scoop about a transition-period Obama administration warning to the incoming Trump administration to ramp up for an inevitable big-time pandemic. The thrust of the article, written by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, is that outgoing Obama officials held a briefing with soon-to-be Trump counterparts on the potential dangers of the kind of bio-threat being faced by the nation right now, and that the Trump-ers were decidedly uninterested.

The allegedly clear implication, as the article quoted former national security advisor Susan E. Rice as recently writing: “Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures and budgets that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic.”

As noted above, the structures and budgets point is bogus. But so is the warnings point. And we know this in part because, as Politico stated (in paragraph 18), “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today.”

Also important to note: The authors presented documents presented at the meeting, and they make clear the phoniness of both the charge that Trump officials were (uniquely) caught flat-footed by CCP Virus testing requirements, and that the leadership vacuum they’ve created has given the states no choice but to fill a gap that’s not their responsibility.

Except the documents say absolutely nothing about boosting testing capabilities or modifying CDC guidelines. And they specify that “State and local governments lead public health response,” especially when it comes to “hospital preparedness and response.”

Recent news reports have created some optimism that effective anti-CCP Virus medicines may be developed sooner than initially expected.  Too bad there’s no reason to think that another serious malady – Trump Derangement Syndrome – will soon come under control.

Those Stubborn Facts: Why Health Security Should “Trump” Free Trade for Americans

Tags

active pharmaceutical ingredients, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, European Union, exports, free trade, globalization, health security, India, medical devices, pandemic, pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, Those Stubborn Facts, Trade

“[White House Office of Manufacturing and Trade Policy Director Peter] Navarro raised a lot of eyebrows when he warned that [international trade] fights over [healthcare-related goods] loomed and told Fox Business Network on Feb. 23: ‘People need to understand in crises like this, we have no allies.’ But what then seemed potentially alarmist now looks like foresight.”

– Bloomberg News, March 16, 2020

Number of countries that have curbed exports of healthcare-related goods*: 38**

 

*Includes pharmaceuticals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, medical devices, surgical appliances and supplies

**India, China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Belarus, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, Russia, United Kingdom, and the 27 members of the European Union

 

(Sources: “Export Wars Erupt as Officials Curb Supplies to Battle Virus,” by Shawn Donnan, Bloomberg News, March 16, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/trade-war-latest-welcome-to-the-coronavirus-export-wars-of-2020-k7uf1k01; “The Global Mask Shortage May Get Much Worse,” by K Oanh Ha, Ibid., March 10, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/the-global-mask-shortage-may-be-about-to-get-much-worse; “Export Trade News,” Foreign Trade Online [latest daily edition], https://www.foreign-trade.com/export_trade.htm; “The World Needs Masks. China Makes Them – But Has Been Hoarding Them,” by Keith Bradsher and Liz Alderman, The New York Times, March 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html; and “UK bans parallel export of two COVID-19 treatment candidates to protect national supply,” by Janet Beal, “Life Sciences,” IHS Markit, February 26, 2020, https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/uk-bans-parallel-export-of-two-covid19-treatment-candidates.html)

Im-Politic: Why the Haters are Wrong About Trump and the Coronavirus

Tags

CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, Council on Foreign Relations, Im-Politic, impeachment, pandemic, public health, Senate, The New York Times, Think Global Health, Trump, WHO, World Health Organization

President Trump sure is getting slammed for his response to the coronavirus outbreak, both by the Mainstream Media, many Democratic Party politicians, and even some public health specialists. (See here and here.) Their main indictments: He’s been hopelessly behind the curve. Or has it been that he’s been too alarmist? Both charges have been made, making clear that the substance doesn’t matter much to the critics.

One allegation seems justified to me: The President’s latest (fiscal 2021) budget request included a 16 percent cut in outlays for the Centers for Disease Control, the branch of the Cabinet-level federal Department of Health and Human Services in charge of the nation’s health security. The budget document was made public eleven days after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak to be an international public health emergency, and six days after Mr. Trump promised in his State of the Union address to take “all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the disease.

But the main problem with the CDC decision, as I see it, is political. Clearly, the timing was terrible, and was bound to be jumped on by reasonable and unreasonable critics alike. Indeed, all of the President’s budget requests have sought such cuts – which also deserves criticism even though Mr. Trump eventually accepted higher funding in the final budget deals each time.

Substantively, however, it’s inconceivable that had any of the sought cuts been actually made, they would have made a discernible difference in the nation’s early-stage anti-coronavirus efforts at least. After all, how could even more money have enabled the agency to predict or identify the virus once it broke out, since it cught China itself by surprise; and since Beijing still refusedsto let U.S. officials as such into the country to aid its own efforts?

It’s true that last year, the Trump administration ended a program in the U.S. government’s foreign aid agency aimed precisely at improving the detection of corona-type viruses “with pandemic potential.” According to ABC News, the program (called PREDICT) “is credited with identifying nearly a thousand” of these maladies since its creation in 2009. Which sounds great. Except the coronavirus clearly wasn’t one of them.

But as for being slow on the coronavirus uptake (a line of attack that’s – understandably – shown more staying power than the “overreaction” claims), timelines showing milestones in the virus’ identification and spread, and principal Trump administration responses demonstrate nothing of the kind. (My main sources are the Think Global Health initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading U.S. think tank; and The New York Times.)

They remind us that the first recorded onset of symptoms, in Wuhan, China, came on December 1, that Chinese authorities first told the World Health Organization (WHO) that something was rotten in that city on December, 31, and that Beijing took its own first anti-virus action the following day – closing a seafood market thought to have been the the origin point.

On January 21, the United States confirmed finding the first domestic American case of the virus – in a man who had traveled to Wuhan. By this time, China had reported six virus-related deaths, and several hundred cases.

A day later, WHO convened its first coronavirus meeting, and ultimately decided against declaring the outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. On January 23 came the first Chinese travel restrictions and quarantines.

Between January 24 and 26, Washington identified four more American cases, and on the 27^th, by which time 3,000 victims around the world had contracted the disease and 60 had died, announced screening programs at domestic airports that handled 90 percent of passengers coming from China along with CDC initiatives “to identify potential cases.” In addition, a high level State Department travel advisory had been announced for Wuhan, and President Trump had spoken with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and offered assistance.

On January 28 and 29, the United States began evacuating its nationals from Wuhan – dates which are significant because it wasn’t until the following day that WHO finally decided to declare the virus an official public health emergency. On the 31^st, as The New York Times reported, the administration announced that it “would bar entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China and put some American travelers under a quarantine as it declared a rare public health emergency.” At the time, worldwide deaths totaled 213 and cases approached 9,800 (eleven in the United States). Also significant – these actions came a day before the first coronavirus death outside China was reported (in the Philippines).

Official U.S. actions by no means stopped then. On February 5, all Peace Corps volunteers were evacuated from China and the CDC starting sending diagnostic kits to more than one hundred laboratories in the United States. (The Food & Drug Administration authorized the tests to be conducted by the kits the day before.) Two days later, on the seventh, the administration pledged $100 million to the global coronavirus fight.

The last week of January, incidentally, was kind of interesting for another reason: President Trump was being tried in the Senate on two articles of impeachment – which themselves represented the culmination of what I’m sure we’ll all agree was a great deal of work by Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as voluminous reporting by the national media. The journalism of course, included the publication of scoops of any number of supposed bombshell revelations about the President’s misdeeds, and even though acquittal seemed certain to most, they clearly sent the President and his top aides scrambling on an ongoing basis and surely occupied a great deal of their time.

Moreover, the trial didn’t end (with the acquittal vote) until February 5 – the date that the Peace Corps volunteers were being evacuated and the CDC diagnostic kits were being issued.

I fully accept that Presidents need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and that indeed, the ability to manage crises successfully, and during the worst of circumstances, is the most important qualification for the job. It’s also possible that the administration has already lost crucial time in the anti-coronavirus fight, and that consequently it will never catch up.

But the above timelines reveal to me, anyway, that the American record so far measures up well versus that of any other national government, and especially well versus that of WHO, which is supposed to be the tip of the spear here. Moreover, the Trump administration response seems all the more alert upon remembering that, as the virus was breaking out, the President was, if not literally fighting for his own life, relentlessly besieged by adversaries both inside and outside his government.  I suspect that posterity, as a result, will need to struggle to judge his initial coronavirus policy decisions as failures.