Tag: U.S and China trade

US governors on Sunday appealed to the White House for a national strategy against the fast-spreading coronavirus, as deaths surged and health authorities warned the coming week could resemble a “Pearl Harbor moment.”

The US death toll was creeping toward the grim milestone of 10,000 as the pandemic’s epicentre in New York racked up hundreds of lives lost a day and hospitals girded for an influx of new infected patients.

Anthony Fauci, the senior American scientist battling the pandemic stateside, warned of a looming “escalation,” saying Americans should prepare for “a bad week.”

“I will not say we have it under control,” Fauci told CBS Sunday. “That would be a false statement.”

US Surgeon General Jerome Adams sounded an even more dire alarm.

“This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly,” he told Fox News.

“This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9-11 moment, only it’s not going to be localised.”

Most of the nation is under shelter-in-place orders, but nine states have yet to issue such regulations, while the federal government has declined to mandate anything on a national level.

Adams noted that the nine states without orders were producing much of the US food supply.

Still, he pleaded with state leaders to urge residents to stay home for at least the next seven to 10 days: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel if everyone does their part.”

Sunday night the White House aimed to emphasize progress in the fight including plans to send hundreds of thousands of masks to counties in New York, but could not sugarcoat the difficult weeks ahead.

“We all know that we have to reach a certain point, and that point is going to be a horrific point in terms of death,” President Donald Trump said at his briefing.

Hitting a plateau?

The coronavirus death toll in hardest-hit New York state rose to 4,159, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, up from 3,565 a day prior.

It was the first time the day-over-day toll had dropped on Saturday it hit a record 630 deaths in 24 hours but Cuomo told journalists it was too early to tell whether that was a “blip.”

New York’s peak could arrive over the next week, he said, though he cautioned it was unclear if the apex would be a point, followed quickly by a decline, or a lingering plateau.

The state has now reported 122,031 confirmed infections roughly one-tenth the worldwide total.

Cuomo said he aimed to shift patients away from already overburdened hospitals to others with more capacity and equipment.

“I can’t say to a hospital, I will send you all the supplies you need, all the vents you need. We don’t have them,” he said, referring to life-saving ventilator equipment. “You are going to have to shift and deploy to different locations.”

The governor said rapid testing, still out-of-reach, was key to a “return to normalcy,” while reiterating appeals for equipment including ventilators from other states as well as from the federal stockpile.

Cuomo vowed to return the favor as the virus spreads elsewhere New Jersey, Michigan and Louisiana are all emerging hotspots saying that New York could offer a strategic blueprint.

‘All hands on deck’

On the Sunday morning talk show circuit, other state governors voiced alarm that the Donald Trump administration has not offered a unified policy plan.

“Not having a national strategy where there is one policy for the country as opposed to a patchwork based on whomever the governor is, is something that I think is creating a more porous situation where COVID-19 will go longer and more people will get sick,” Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer said on Fox News.

“We are not one another’s enemy,” she added. “The enemy is COVID-19. And it has to be all hands on deck, from the federal level, to the state level, to the local level.”

Throughout the weekend Trump stressed that the US where infections have surpassed 330,000 cannot remain economically shut down forever, and continued to leave it to the states to declare their own mitigation strategies and lockdown orders.

Illinois’s Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker skewered the Trump administration for not better preparing the nation, leaving the virus to slam the US as it has Europe and China.

“If they had started in February building ventilators, getting ready for this pandemic, we would not have the problems that we have today, and frankly, very many fewer people would die,” Pritzker told CNN.

At his briefing the president later accused Pritzker of “always complaining.”

Source: AFP

A hard-won trade war truce between the US and China is at risk as the coronavirus pandemic rocks the global economy, making it tough for Beijing to fulfil its commitments.

The United States also faces huge disruptions from the deadly virus while a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Washington threatens to derail the phase-one deal that came after more than a year of escalating tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

In the pact signed in January, China agreed to buy $200 billion more in US goods over two years than it did in 2017 — before the trade war erupted and triggered tariffs on billions of dollars of two-way trade.

But concerns are mounting that the conditions of the deal cannot be met as the world economy is threatened by governments taking drastic measures to contain the outbreak, including quarantines, travel bans and closures of public spaces.

“(The coronavirus) is likely to be a huge distraction for both governments,” said Steve Tsang, head of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Global markets have plummeted, oil prices have slid, and the International Monetary Fund warned this week that 2020 growth will drop below last year’s 2.9 percent under “any scenario”.

“I would be surprised if they can now fulfil the terms of the phase one deal,” said Tsang.

Trade plunge

Huge waves of business closures have not only disrupted China’s consumer spending and manufacturing but also the world’s supply chains.

Companies told AFP the past year has brought disarray first from the trade war, then the virus outbreak.

Qingzhou Ruiyuan Trading Company restarted importing soybeans from the United States this month, but sales were down at least 20 percent from last year, said the general manager surnamed Li.

He was uncertain how quickly they would be able to boost business once the health crisis is over.

“We’re affected by the epidemic, and the impact is rather big,” Li said, blaming a drop in domestic demand.

“We can’t control the market.”

China’s exports plummeted in the first two months of this year on the back of the new coronavirus, falling 17.2 percent from a year ago, while imports slipped 4.0 percent.

The virus threatens “China’s import commitments as mandated by the phase one trade deal,” said Rory Green, economist at research firm TS Lombard.

China has agreed to buy more US farm commodities and seafood, manufactured goods such as aircraft, machinery and steel, and energy products.

But there are provisions “to allow a delay in compliance, and both nations are likely to accept this, given the global nature of the coronavirus outbreak,” Green added.

“There is now no chance of China fulfilling its import targets within the timeframe set by the text of the agreement.”

Distrust

The US economy is also taking a hit from the virus, with the government introducing sweeping restrictions on arrivals from Europe and huge stock market falls.

Diplomatic tensions between the US and China have also flared up during the outbreak.

Washington ordered Chinese state-run media to cut the number of Chinese nationals employed in the United States after Beijing expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters.

The two countries have also sparred over the pandemic, with a US ban on arrivals from China angering Beijing.

More recently, Washington blamed Beijing for the disease and China — where the virus was first detected in December — promoted conspiracy theories that it started in the United States.

“I doubt that either has considered fully the implications (that) the measures taken to counter the spread of the virus have for their bilateral relations,” said Tsang.

But he said that given the upcoming US election, President Donald Trump was unlikely to highlight any failure by China to meet all the terms of the deal.

Instead, Trump will use the agreement to score political points.

But the trade war has fuelled distrust among farmers in both countries that could undermine the deal’s success.

In the Federal Reserve’s latest “beige book” survey, some US farmers said purchases of agricultural goods by China had “not yet materialized” and expressed worries that the virus “would be used as an excuse for missing future trade targets”.

Liu Lingxue, general manager of agricultural trading firm Guangzhou Liangnian, said her profits have fallen by at least a third during the virus outbreak.

But she does not want to import sorghum and soybeans from the US.

“We would first consider other countries that have been friendlier to China,” she said.

Source: France24