Thursday, May 7, 2020
'Outrageous, Callous, and Cruel': Seniors Rip Trump for Holding Covid-19 Relief Hostage to Push Social Security Cuts
"Trump's actions are a war on seniors. He is insisting on threatening Social Security on which most seniors rely for their food, medicine, and other basic necessities."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
55 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/05/outrageous-callous-and-cruel-seniors-rip-trump-holding-covid-19-relief-hostage-push
Grassroots advocacy groups representing millions of retirees and seniors across the United States are speaking out against and urging Congress to oppose President Donald Trump's threat to block desperately needed Covid-19 relief legislation if it does not slash the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare.
"It is outrageous, callous, and cruel for President Trump to hold the American people, and seniors in particular, hostage if Congress doesn't go along with his plan to gut Social Security for current and future retirees," said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an organization with over four million members nationwide.
During a Fox News town hall Sunday night, Trump said he would oppose any additional coronavirus stimulus package that does not include his long-desired payroll tax cut, which would provide zero direct relief to the more than 30 million Americans who have lost their jobs over the past six weeks. The president suggested at a press briefing last month that the tax cut should be permanent."The president's plan is also bad economics. Social Security puts more than $800 billion into the economy each year. Destabilizing the system when we are in the middle of an economic downtown is exactly the opposite of what we need to do," Fiesta added. "The 4.4 million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans call on all members of Congress to refuse to make such a deal. We will fight this attempt to gut Social Security and in November we will remember who was willing to defend and protect our earned benefits."
"We're not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut," Trump said Sunday, just days after vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement Monday that Trump's remarks "set off alarm bells for America's seniors and their advocates."
"Make no mistake: by pushing to cut off the program's funding stream, President Trump is taking the first step toward dismantling Social Security," said Richtman. "The president's campaign to eliminate payroll taxes is a violation of his patently false promises to seniors 'not to touch' Social Security. This proposal goes way beyond 'touching.' Choking off Social Security's funding stream is an existential threat to seniors' earned benefits."
The multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late March, contains a provision allowing employers to delay payment of the payroll tax for at least the duration of 2020.
Advocates warned at the time that the provision, which replaces payroll tax revenue with general revenue, represents a fundamental threat to Social Security's long-term financial health. Nancy Altman, president of advocacy group Social Security Works, predicted that Republicans will "undoubtedly use the general revenue to demand cuts to Social Security in the name of 'reining in entitlements.'"
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a proponent of Social Security cuts, hinted in that direction last month, declaring that "the future of our country in terms of the amount of debt that we're adding up is a matter of genuine concern."
In a statement on Monday, Altman said the president's relentless push for a payroll tax cut shows "how desperately Trump and the right-wing ideologues surrounding him want to defund Social Security, so they have an excuse down the road to demand cuts to our earned benefits."
"Trump's actions are a war on seniors," said Altman. "He wants to open up the economy, even though Covid-19 is disproportionately costing seniors their lives. Now he is insisting on threatening Social Security on which most seniors rely for their food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Members of Congress, particularly House Democrats, need to stand strong and call Trump's bluff."
The Trump administration’s war against society
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/06/pers-m06.html
6 May 2020
Amidst the expanding coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the Trump administration is implementing a reckless and socially criminal “open up the economy” policy that will result in hundreds of thousands of deaths that could, with correct policies, be prevented.
Trump, in an interview with ABC News aired on Tuesday night, exuded indifference to the consequences of the policies his administration is carrying out. “There’ll be more death,” Trump said, “the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine. And I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal.”
On Monday, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close advisor to Trump, bluntly told CNN that it was necessary for the American people to “sacrifice” their lives by going back to work. “The American people have gone through significant death before [in World War I and II] … and we’ve survived it. We sacrificed those lives.” The “sacrifice,” he added, was necessary to “stand up for the American way of life.”
When asked whether he thought the American people would accept up to 3,000 deaths per day by the end of this month, as projected by a leaked internal report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Christie replied: “They’re gonna have to.”
Even as the virus spreads, the Trump administration is ending all pretense of prioritizing the saving of lives. To underscore this point, the White House announced on Tuesday that it is planning on shutting down its “coronavirus task force” as the country moves to “open up.” Trump has already cancelled press conferences of the task force, and the administration is clearly preparing to get rid of its most prominent spokesman, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The drive to open up the economy is taking place under conditions in which the spread is accelerating. By mid-day Tuesday, the official number of new deaths in the United States was 2,350, up sharply from 1,324 recorded the previous day. The death toll has now passed 70,000. Less than a week ago, the Trump administration stated that it expected that the death toll would reach 75,000 by August. In reality, that toll will be reached before the end of this week.
The pandemic is expanding rapidly in rural areas and throughout the Midwest. There is a rise in the number of deaths in Texas, which is the first indication of the disastrous consequences of a premature back to work movement.
The New York Times noted in an article published on Tuesday, “Rural towns that one month ago were unscathed are suddenly hot spots for the virus. It is rampaging through nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons, killing the medically vulnerable and the poor, and new outbreaks keep emerging in grocery stores, Walmarts or factories, an ominous harbinger of what a full reopening of the economy will bring.”
Dakota County, Nebraska, a center of the meatpacking industry, now has the third-most cases on a per capita basis in the country, after reporting no cases as late as April 11. Nearly 600 meatpacking workers in the region tested positive for the virus last month. The number of cases is increasing sharply in Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico and many other states.
In addition to Christie’s statement about the necessity for “sacrifice,” Trump declared on Tuesday afternoon that the American people are “warriors,” with the implication that they must be willing to give their lives to the cause. What is the “war” and what is the “cause”?
The war that the administration is carrying out is not a war against the pandemic. Its policy is that of “herd immunity”—that the coronavirus should be allowed to run rampant with nothing done to stop it.
The war that Trump is waging is a war against society. The “sacrifices” are those demanded by Wall Street. As for the “cause,” it is the enrichment of the corporate-financial oligarchy. The “American way of life” invoked by Trump and Christie that is to be defended has nothing to do with the lives and interests of the vast majority of the population, who want to protect themselves, their families and their coworkers. Rather, it means going back to work and dying for profits.
The Trump administration is articulating a policy with distinctly fascistic characteristics, but it is a policy that is embedded in class interests. After first downplaying the pandemic, the Trump administration and Congress utilized the crisis atmosphere to carry out a multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street. Even amidst economic conditions and mass unemployment not seen since the Great Depression, and an expanding death toll, share values continue to rise relentlessly.
The homicidal policy of the Trump administration and the new Wall Street Bull Market are two sides of the same phenomenon. The interests of the corporate-financial elite are completely alienated from and opposed to society. The enrichment of the ruling elite is dependent upon the suffering of the mass of the people.
Having vastly expanded the debt level of the United States, the ruling class is compelled to intensify its exploitation and impoverishment of the working class. This is the central force behind the mad drive to return to work. Millions of workers have been unable to receive any unemployment benefits, while small businesses have been cut out of access to loans as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The aim is to create an economic imperative for a return to work.
The Trump administration has the advantage of not facing any significant opposition within the political establishment. The policy of massive enrichment of the oligarchy is bipartisan. The handout to Wall Street, sanctioned by the CARES Act, was passed unanimously in the Senate, with every single Democrat and Republican voting for it, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Whatever nervousness may exist in the media over the social implications of Trump’s policy, the back to work campaign is also bipartisan. The campaign to ensure that the “cure is not worse than the disease” was initiated by the New York Times and its columnist Thomas Friedman, who continues to campaign for a strategy based on “herd immunity.” As the Trump administration implements a policy that will lead to widespread deaths, there is no statement of opposition from the Democratic Party.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the fight against the pandemic is inseparable from a fight against the capitalist system. The conflict between the needs of society and the profit system is not just a theoretical question. It is demonstrated in practice every single day.
All social resources must be directed not to bailing out Wall Street, but to securing the needs of the working class. Non-essential production must remain closed as every measure is taken to preserve life and contain the virus. All workers must receive full income and benefits until it is possible to return to their jobs under safe conditions. Mortgages, student loans and other payments to the banks must be cancelled.
The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally denounces the “back to work” and “return to normal” campaign.
The fight against the pandemic is inseparably linked to a struggle against the ruling class and its dictatorship of economic and political life. It is, therefore, a political struggle to mobilize the working class against a lawless government and the capitalist system that it defends.
Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president
US nursing home catastrophe: Increasing numbers of the elderly fall victim to COVID-19
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/06/nurs-m06.html
By Kate Randall
6 May 2020
Long-term care homes overrun with COVID-19 infections and deaths, refrigerated trailers holding bodies that overburdened funeral homes cannot accept, nursing home morgues stacked with corpses, seniors left to suffer and die alone—these are just some of the horrors and indignities that face residents of America’s facilities caring for the elderly during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Trump administration has openly stated that up to 100,000 Americans can expect to die in the coming weeks and months as states move to reopen the economy. This shocking revision upwards of the administration’s death projections were recounted by the president on Sunday with cold-blooded contempt for the lives of those who stand to die. And the numbers are likely an underestimation.
Disproportionately included among these countless thousands of deaths will be the elderly, many of them residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. In the US, perhaps more than in any other nation, seniors are not revered by the powers that be for their long years of labor and family care, but rather are seen as a drain on the economy. It can be said with confidence that the wiping out of large numbers of the older population is seen by the ruling elite as a convenient and positive byproduct of the coronavirus pandemic.
An internal report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published by the New York Times projects that 3,000 daily deaths can be expected by June 1. This horrific death toll is the price the American ruling elite says is required to restart the economy under conditions where COVID-19 infections continue to steadily rise.
COVID-19 has already exacted a grim toll among the nearly 3 million individuals living in long-term care facilities across the US, including in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and intermediate care facilities. Another 3 million people work in these facilities, the majority under deplorable conditions and for poor pay, and with little to no protection against contracting the virus themselves.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), in the 23 US states that publicly reported death data in long-term facilities, there were over 10,000 reported deaths due to COVID-19 among residents and staff. In five states—Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Utah—deaths in these facilities accounted for a staggering 50 percent or more of coronavirus deaths.
Horrific stories continue to emerge from long-term care facilities across the country in the pandemic. Of the more than 25,000 deaths in New York, the nation’s hardest hit state, at least 4,813 residents with confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19 have died at 351 of New York’s 613 nursing homes since March 1. On Monday the state reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities.
At one New York City nursing home, the Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, nearly 100 of its 705 residents have died. Officials at the nursing home revealed Friday that 46 residents who tested positive for COVID-19, along with 52 suspected of having the virus, had passed away.
This huge death toll, the largest nursing home cluster in New York state, was first reported by local cable news station NY1. The station’s report also revealed that due to delays by overburdened funeral homes in picking up bodies, the center had brought in a refrigerated trailer to store bodies and had concealed the trailer under tarps hung on the nursing home’s fence. An official at the geriatric center said that the deadly situation had been compounded by a lack of in-house testing, staffing shortages and difficulty obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE) for employees.
In Medfield, Massachusetts, north of Boston, COVID-19 has killed 54 residents over the past four weeks at the Courtyard Nursing Care Center. An additional 117 residents and 42 employees have tested positive for the virus. Dr. Richard Feifer, chief medical officer for Genesis Healthcare, which owns Courtyard, told the Boston Globe that the nursing home cares for “largely frail, elderly seniors with multiple health conditions,” a description that applies to virtually all nursing home residents.
Deaths at the Medfield facility have received less media attention than would be expected until recently because of the COVID-19 outbreak that has ravaged the Soldiers’ Home, a veterans’ care facility in Holyoke in the western part of Massachusetts. A shocking 84 residents have died at the facility since the virus outbreak. Eighty-one employees have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The deaths at the Soldiers’ Home were initially hidden from both the mayor of Holyoke and local health officials, who only became aware of the developing situation when employees at the facility reached out to them. Staff said management at the facility refused to provide them with PPE and instructed them to crowd patients together from multiple wards into a single ward as a solution to staffing shortages due to infections. A state investigation into the deaths is underway.
A particularly gruesome discovery took place in mid-April when police found 17 corpses piled up at the Subacute and Rehabilitation Center in Andover, New Jersey. The bodies were stacked in a small morgue designed to hold a maximum of four bodies. The more than 2,000 deaths of staff and residents in New Jersey’s long-term facilities account for about 40 percent of the state’s coronavirus-related deaths.
The Detroit Health Department reported at the end of April that 200 residents along with three workers had died of coronavirus in the city’s 26 nursing homes. All 26 nursing homes in the city have cases of COVID-19, according to Mayor Mike Duggan. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services released data showing a total of 2,637 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents throughout the state.
As the state of Florida began to reopen some of its beaches and businesses this week, a list from the Florida Department of Health detailed more than 300 long-term care facilities where staff or residents had tested positive for COVID-19. Florida reported nearly 1,400 deaths statewide and 284 deaths in these facilities, but these numbers are suspect. They do not correspond to numbers reported by senior facilities and figures from the state’s medical examiner’s office.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in nursing homes and other elder care facilities have been similarly prevalent in Europe. According to the World Health Organization, up to 50 percent of the COVID-19 deaths in Europe have been associated with long-term care facilities. In the UK, official figures only recently began to include at-home and nursing home deaths.
As in the US, many of the elderly are suffering COVID-19 without visits from friends and family, which adds an additional emotional toll. Elders’ dignity is robbed as they take their last breaths hooked up to a ventilator with only hospital staff around them. Despite being overworked and placing themselves in danger of infection, doctors and nurses have been treating those dying with compassion, tending to them in their final hours and setting up phone and video calls with patients’ family members.
This kindheartedness stands in sharp contrast to the cruelty heaped on the elderly by government authorities—local, state and federal—who have underreported deaths in senior care facilities and provided little assistance to nursing homes and their workers in the form of testing and PPE. With the lives of hundreds of thousands of the population seen as the price that must be paid to get workers back on the job to produce profit, seniors who deserve high-quality medical care are instead seen as expendable as their profit-generating days are over.
At “reopen the economy” event, Trump confirms plans to shut down coronavirus task force
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/06/trum-m06.html
By Barry Grey
6 May 2020
At an appearance in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday to promote the government’s back-to-work campaign, President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he is planning to dismantle the White House coronavirus task force. Trump traveled to Phoenix to tour a Honeywell aerospace plant that has partially converted to the production of N95 masks.
His first major event outside of Washington DC in a month, it was meant to signal that the period of quarantining is over and it is time to shift to reopening business. The White House indicated that more such appearances would soon follow, including one in Ohio later this week.
Trump combined his tour of the plant with a so-called “round table” with Navajo Indian officials, at which he displayed an executive order allocating $600 million for the Navajo Nation to combat the coronavirus. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive social needs of an impoverished and oppressed population that lacks the basic health infrastructure needed to deal with the pandemic. It is a tiny fraction of the more than $6 trillion that has been allocated on a bipartisan basis by Congress and the Federal Reserve to bail out Wall Street.
In a brief exchange with reporters following the round table, Trump was asked to respond to a report in the New York Times that he was planning to “wind down” the White House task force on the virus. He confirmed the report, saying the country had entered “phase two” of the pandemic, which he called “safety and opening.” He added, “We will have a different group probably set up for that.”
Trump’s appearance featured the combination of self-congratulation, stupidity and brazen lying to which millions around the world have become accustomed. Significantly, he made a point of calling the American people “warriors,” implying that they had to be prepared to die. And to die, moreover, for Wall Street.
His announcement on the task force underscored that the drive to force workers back into factories and workplaces, without any serious safety precautions or equipment, and while the pandemic continues to rage unchecked, puts an end to any pretense of a coordinated effort to contain the disease.
It makes clear that the drive to resume corporate-profit making, in defiance of warnings from public health experts as well as polls showing lopsided majorities opposed to the operation, is a conscious decision to let the deadly virus spread more widely and take untold thousands more lives.
In practical terms, the existence of the task force, which includes scientists and medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, exerted little influence on the response of the Trump administration and the political establishment as a whole to the pandemic. From the onset, the response of the government has been determined by the interests and demands of the corporate-financial oligarchy that runs the country.
But the winding down of the body has considerable symbolic significance. It is a statement that neither the facts, nor science, nor popular opinion, nor the horrific toll in death and disease will deter the ruling class from propping up the stock market and expanding the wealth of the super-rich, no matter the human cost.
Trump is using the technique of the “big lie” to justify his back-to-work campaign. He claims that the pandemic is all but over, even as deaths surge past the 70,000 mark and infections continue to increase. It is, moreover, well known that the official figures vastly underestimate the real levels of contagion and death.
Earlier on Tuesday, as he left the White House to fly to Phoenix, Trump dismissed as irrelevant a report to the Centers for Disease Control by Johns Hopkins University predicting that the infection rate in the US would explode to 200,000 a day and the death rate would nearly double to 3,000 by the end of May.
He said the report assumed the absence of mitigation measures, while the moves to “reopen” already underway or announced by at least 42 states included “lots of mitigation.” This is a lie.
Few if any of the states meet the guidelines for reopening that Trump himself announced last month, including 14 straight days of declining infections. Many are openly flaunting minimal social distancing precautions, opening barber shops, beauty salons, gyms, beaches, shopping malls, restaurants and even movie theaters.
Even the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has consistently produced the lowest estimates of COVID-19 deaths of any scientific body, and which the White House has cited in the past, on Monday raised its projection for US deaths by August 1 from the already surpassed 60,000 to 135,000, based on what it called a “premature” lifting of social distancing measures.
In shutting down the task force, Trump is seeking to suppress any objective factual and scientific reporting. Despite efforts to accommodate himself to Trump, Fauci frequently felt obliged to contradict claims by the president of miracle cures and early vaccines, and he warned of the dangers of a premature reopening of the economy. As he seeks to intimidate and repress working class resistance to being forced to work under unsafe conditions, Trump will no doubt step up efforts to suppress statistical data on the actual impact of the disease.
Like everything else Trump does, the Phoenix event is closely linked to his electoral prospects in November. Arizona is considered a battleground state. He carried the state in 2016, but recent polls show a close race with the presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Like a majority of states across the country, including states with Democratic governors, Arizona is loosening social distancing measures and beginning to allow non-essential businesses to reopen. The day before Trump’s visit, Republican Governor Doug Ducey announced he was accelerating his plan to reopen the state’s economy.
Also on Monday, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of the California, the most populous state in the country, announced that he would begin to reopen this Friday. Echoing Trump, he said, “We are entering into the next phase this week, end of the week.” The “next phase” will include the reopening of beaches and “adjustments this week in the retail sector.”
Trump’s sociopathic gangsterism is not simply an individual question. He embodies the corporate-financial ruling elite in America. As in the rest of the world, this financial oligarchy is consciously exploiting the pandemic to implement policies of social plunder it had long been preparing to deal with a deepening economic crisis of the capitalist system. Despite tactical differences, the Democrats fully back this homicidal policy, which is directed above all against the working class.
Antibody blocks infection by the SARS-CoV-2 in cells, scientists discover
May 4, 2020
Utrecht University
Researchers report that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200504074722.htm
Researchers at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour BioMed (HBM) today reported that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery, published online today in Nature Communications, is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across the globe infecting more than 3.3M people worldwide and killing more than 235,000 people so far.
"This research builds on the work our groups have done in the past on antibodies targeting the SARS-CoV that emerged in 2002/2003," said Berend-Jan Bosch, Associate Professor, Research leader at Utrecht University, and co-lead author of the Nature Communications study. "Using this collection of SARS-CoV antibodies, we identified an antibody that also neutralizes infection of SARS-CoV-2 in cultured cells. Such a neutralizing antibody has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus."
Dr. Bosch noted that the antibody binds to a domain that is conserved in both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, explaining its ability to neutralize both viruses. "This cross-neutralizing feature of the antibody is very interesting and suggests it may have potential in mitigation of diseases caused by future-emerging related coronaviruses."
"This discovery provides a strong foundation for additional research to characterize this antibody and begin development as a potential COVID-19 treatment," said Frank Grosveld, PhD. co-lead author on the study, Academy Professor of Cell Biology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam and Founding Chief Scientific Officer at Harbour BioMed. "The antibody used in this work is 'fully human,' allowing development to proceed more rapidly and reducing the potential for immune-related side effects." Conventional therapeutic antibodies are first developed in other species and then must undergo additional work to 'humanize' them. The antibody was generated using Harbour BioMed's H2L2 transgenic mouse technology.
"This is groundbreaking research," said Dr. Jingsong Wang, Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of HBM. "Much more work is needed to assess whether this antibody can protect or reduce the severity of disease in humans. We expect to advance development of the antibody with partners. We believe our technology can contribute to addressing this most urgent public health need and we are pursuing several other research avenues."
The paper is titled, "A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-VoV-2 Infection. In addition to Drs. Bosch and Grosveld, authors on the paper included: Chunyan Wang, Wentao Li and Frank van Kuppeveld of Utrecht University; Nisreen Okba and Bart Haagmans of Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam); Dubravka Drabek and Rien van Haperen of Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour Antibodies; and Albert Osterhaus of the University of Veterinary Medicine (Hannover, Germany).
Story Source:
Materials provided by Utrecht University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Chunyan Wang, Wentao Li, Dubravka Drabek, Nisreen M. A. Okba, Rien van Haperen, Albert D. M. E. Osterhaus, Frank J. M. van Kuppeveld, Bart L. Haagmans, Frank Grosveld, Berend-Jan Bosch. A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16256-y
What’s Driving Trump’s Political Attacks on China
M.K. Bhadrakumar May 5, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/whats-driving-trumps-political-attacks-on-china/
The U.S. President Donald Trump has tied himself and onlookers in knots by his alternating encomiums for and diatribes against China over COVID-19 in the recent weeks. Only he can cut the Gordian knot, and he will be in a position to do so only after November when the U.S. presidential election is over.
There could be different interpretations as to why Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric on China. Three explanations stand out. Prima facie, as China would have us believe, Trump possibly amplified his criticism of China to deflect from his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A New York Times report in April said that “An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.” The report continued:
“The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.”
In effect, Trump squandered vital time while the number of infections started to surge through February and early March. Over the period “from Feb. 26 to March 16, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States grew from 15 to 4,226. … [In total, more than 1 million] Americans have tested positive for the virus and authorities say hundreds of thousands more are likely infected,” and close to 70,000 lives have been lost as of May 4.
Conceivably, a blame game was the last resort for the Trump administration to cover up its incompetence. Trump had taken a conciliatory approach through the middle of March, praising the job Chinese President Xi Jinping was doing in handling the spread of COVID-19, but the tone changed abruptly when he broadcast a new message about the “Chinese virus.”
However, on closer examination, Trump, who has a keen eye on the news cycle, has no real need for a blame game. His approval rating in a Gallup poll released on April 30 stands at an incredible 49 percent. Clearly, his overall approval is above water. In particular, 50 percent said they approve of his handling of the pandemic.
This is despite the fact that the mounting jobless claims and volatile financial markets have deprived him of the strongest argument for his reelection: a strong economy.
This lends credibility to the other two explanations for Trump’s mood swings relating to China. Trump has positioned himself to tap into the public mood in the U.S., which has turned increasingly negative toward China amid the coronavirus outbreak. A new Pew Research Center survey of Americans conducted in March reveals that “[r]oughly two-thirds now say they have an unfavorable view of China, the most negative rating for the country since the Center began asking the question in 2005, and up nearly 20 percentage points since the start of the Trump administration” in 2017.
Curiously, the Pew report continued, “more Americans now see the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power than at any time over the past 12 years” and “also overwhelmingly believe their country leads the world militarily and that the world is better off with U.S. leadership as opposed to that of China.” Furthermore, “Only about a quarter” of Americans surveyed by Pew reported “a favorable attitude” toward China.
Importantly, “[a]cross demographic groups, negative views of China abound. Roughly six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents… and seven-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents” “have unfavorable views of China,” according to Pew.
Without a doubt, Trump is not only in sync with the American people but is riding the wave of public opinion. Alongside this, there is a second factor: Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee in the November election. Trump’s favorite epithets for Biden are “Sleepy Joe” and “Beijing Biden.” Trump would have us believe that Biden is a comrade of “Crazy Bernie,” whose coziness with China makes him unfit for the presidency.
Trump’s main case for re-election—a roaring economy—has evaporated, and he and his team are devising a new strategy: smearing his political rival’s reputation by linking him to an old geopolitical foe. “China wants Sleepy Joe sooo badly,” Trump tweeted on April 18, adding: “Joe is an easy mark, their DREAM CANDIDATE!” A campaign email earlier in April drilled the point home: “I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA.”
By doing so, Trump is maneuvering to shift the focus from his administration’s erratic response to COVID-19. He is harnessing America’s growing hostility toward China to launch the personal assault on “Beijing Biden.”
American electoral politics is rambunctious, and it is common to negatively define a political opponent early in the campaign. George W. Bush resorted to such tactics against John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama against Mitt Romney in 2012. Evidently, Trump has calculated that this is just the time to really set the tone and the narrative against Biden, who is a well-known former vice president with a long-established reputation of being a folksy pragmatist.
Thus, a war of words has begun in competing campaign commercials over who is tougher on China. The Trump campaign released an ad in early April pillorying Biden over his past remarks on China and declaring that “for 40 years Joe Biden has been wrong about China.” A website, BeijingBiden.com, has appeared devoted to “Biden’s purported ‘cozy relationship with China,’” as Lauren Gambino of the Guardian reports.
For sure, the Gambino continued, the “Biden campaign responded with a blistering ad campaign of its own” blaming “Trump for not holding China to account earlier over its handling of the virus, saying the president ‘failed to act’ as the coronavirus spread,” while also “featuring footage of Trump praising Xi and saying that the president ‘gave China his trust.’”
However, Trump also takes care not to overreach. The point is, China holds many of the cards in the months leading to November. China has significant leverage over global health supplies. “China controls a vast supply of the masks and protective gear needed by American hospitals. And if China develops a vaccine first, it will turn into a really powerful card, one that will bolster its global standing and give it leverage over the health of hundreds of millions of Americans,” as a New York Times report put it.
Equally, Trump will gauge the effect of the rhetoric and related spike in tensions on the trade talks with China. It is far from an open-and-shut case that China will meet the commitment under the interim trade pact in January to purchase $200 billion in American goods over the next two years.
Meanwhile, China is all but certain to emerge from the recession caused by the pandemic faster than other nations. On the contrary, the U.S., which has a long road to recovery, whenever it begins, will have to rely on economic activity in Asia, where China is undoubtedly the principal driver of growth, to help prop up its own economy. This is where Beijing’s compliance with the January trade agreement becomes vital.
For this reason, a recent CNN report was titled “It’s an insane time for Trump to pick (another) fight with China.” The report cited economists warning that any strategy “to use tariffs or other sanctions to punish China for its role in the health crisis… could badly backfire, potentially turning what is now a deep recession into a full-blown depression.” And the economy could be the big loser. It comes as no surprise that Trump keeps vacillating on his public statements on China.
This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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