He has now threatened to remove China’s sovereign immunity so people can sue it, with a former lawyer of his organization, George Sorial, now of Berman and Associates, cooking up a class action suit against China; a threat to stop paying interest on US bonds held by China, which he probably will not do because it occurs to him that this default on the US national debt might “damage the sacred standing of the dollar” duh; and finally to impose yet more tariffs on China, a threat that promptly sent the stock market plunging after several days of rising, although we know he really likes putting tariffs on China. Probably the first of these would be the least harmful and the most likely he will do, very noisy but not amounting to too much in the end as China will just ignore it.
Donald Trump Goes Absolutely Bonkers Over China
Donald Trump Goes Absolutely Bonkers Over China
I note that in this press conference he claimed that he has seen intelligence showing a “high probability” that the virus came out of a Wuhan lab. So far no other sources have said that, although by all reports that possibility has not been ruled out. But by this almost certain lie Trump has almost certainly killed any remaining chance that China might cooperate with the US on really determining the ultimate origin of the virus, something that would be scientifically and medically useful. It may be that this origin will be discovered, but it will not be through such cooperation. It is completely reasonable that China will resist something they perceive as possibly leading to them being denounced and sued.
My own theory as to what triggered yesterday’s outburst is that he reportedly blew up at his campaign chief, Brad Parscal, onWedneday when Parscale reportedly showed him serious polls showing him losing to Biden in most of the swing states. He apparently was yelling and using the “f word.” of course public polling has been showing this for a long time, but Trump has apparently up until Wednesday simply ignored or written off such polls. In any case, this going after China big time and hard looks to me to be his response to these bad polls, a desperate attempt to regain an electoral edge by an aggressive foreign policy, one that is potentially very dangerous and damaging in this current situation, which apparently some of his economic advisers understand. But he is reportedly now leaning to his national security hardliners like SecState Mike Pompeo. This is not at all good news.
Going off on China is the only card in his hand.
Given how things will probably be going for the US response to the Covid-19 outbreak by November then finding someone else to blame is of utmost importance. Trump cannot hang it all on blue state governors, since by then the national security interests will weigh more heavily on risks to health by disease and by food prices than it will upon the direct economic impact of the lockdown policies. Uncle can print money, but not healthcare and food processing workers. The failure to rapidly produce personal protective equipment for healthcare workers AND food processing workers has been epic, in the worst possible connotation of the word. Such an epic fail by a elected official requires some major shifting of the blame.
SW,
Precisely. It is too late for Trump to actually do his job and besides it would be totally out of character for him.
Just a repeat of blaming people of color for everything. It appeals to his base.
Isn’t Joe Biden a secret ChiCom agent?
After all, The Dumpster® is an agent (or dupe) of Putin.
So this tantrum is merely part of the great war between China and Russia.
This is too funny — https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trumps-handling-of-coronavirus-may-further-alienate-seniors.html
Is there any way for the US to regain any trust as a responsible nation again?
JaneE, Not in my lifetime and unless you are very young not in yours either. Lysol Man has turned this country into the world’s laughing stock and other than its nukes, made it irrelevant. All of this in 31/2 years and we have wild eyed men running around state capitols heavily armed. It is like a scene out of Caracas or Mogadishu . Meanwhile the religious right is yammering to have weekly COVID-19 parties. If this is making America great, I want no part of it and I strongly suspect enough folks in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have learned the lesson that just because you despise somebody is not a good reason to elect a F***ing moron president.
@JaneE I liken the hard-right right wing trajectory that we are on right now to a virus itself: it will need to burn itself out or we will need to gain herd immunity. Trump is the main vector of this toxic mind virus and we can do nothing about it because the nature of neoliberal propaganda and capture of the media. I tell my kids that it will take a generation or more for this to fix itself and get back to a reasonable way of governing ourselves. I recommend Adam Curtis’ 2002 documentary “Century of the Self” to understand why the WI and MI voters will continue to vote against their overall self interest and why we have no chance of overcoming the the John Birtch Society. It won, hands down.
BD:
Michigan will go Dem in 2020 like it has since 1990 only to vote for anybody but trump or Clinton in 2016. The state is mostly DEM.
Right wing globalism. Trump is globalist and it shows. When personal debt is being called in, the party ends. Nothing he does will change that. Killing the plutocracy is next.
Fwiw, civic 19 is a pretty standard SARS. It just mutated to a more infectious strain.
I don’t know. Guys eating bats? Or pangolins? Or maybe the lab in Wuhan known to be researching these kinds of virus screwed up? By the end of summer there could be 100,000 dead. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more to come after that. Multiple 10s of millions unemployed or out of business. If the evidence that China let this virus loose and then lied about it is good, there will be such an overwhelming rage about it that there won’t be much daylight between Trump and Biden on this….if Biden has enough sense that is. Thinking that finessing the evidence to maintain some kind of adequate relations with China is in the cards is nuts. Way toO big a situation. If told that the hard truth will wreck relations for a century, no one is going to blink here.
The consequences of Trump virusgate/chinagate move is difficult to predict, but it looks like Trump severely underestimated them.
I think we will never discover the real origin of this virus. The veil of secrecy is just too tight and now in no way china will allow the international inspection of Wuhan lab and the USA inspection of any of possibly involved USA biolabs such as Baric biolab at UNC, and the famous military biolab at Fort Detrick. .
So Trump accusations probably amount to nothing more then a hearsay, kind of a desperate attempt to win some election 2020 points on anti-china playing field.
Trump also limited the future freedom of maneuver by taking this hostile to China stance without any solid data about the real origin of the virus. The blunder very similar to committed by Trump administration with Iran.
Please note that there are three leading hypothesis as for the origin of the virus
1. Zoonotic transition (which might happen in the lab so it does not completely exclude (2) or (3) )
2. Escaped for one of the China biolabs, probably from the Wuhan biolabs which conducted “gain of function” experiments partially financed by the USA and which violated USA moratorium of such experiments (while this moratorium was in place — Trump administration removed it in 2017) . It is interesting that it was Dr. Fauci who was instrumental in this “outsourcing” and due to whom Wuhan lab was provided with the financing for the dangerous “gain of function” experiments bypassing and violating the USA moratorium. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-dr-shi-zhengli-wuhan-institute-virology-connected-coronavirus-experimented-live-animals-proof/
3. Escaped from one of the USA biolabs around August 2019. Fort Detrick (of anthrax release fame) is often mentioned as the place. In this case it is possible that China got it with the USA team which participated in 2019 Military World Games in October 18–27 http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0321/c90000-9670852.html
Which is pretty close to November 17, 2019 — suggested but unconfirmed date of first infection in Wuhan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic and https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html
Here is one interesting comment from http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0321/c90000-9670852.html
China has abilities to make hypothesis (3) more prominent which will hurt the USA in a long run. The problem is that the USA has the baggage of bio experiments on people (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States ), and is as reluctant to provide data the USA and several xUSSR countries biolabs (now controlled by the USA), as China about its biolabs.
That includes providing the real reasons of closure of Fort Detrick biolab in August 2019 and the nature of very strange August 2019 “vaping pneumonia epidemic” which officially affected several thousand people and which has symptoms by-and-large identical to COVID-19 but with much lower propagation capabilities(https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/filqx9/is_it_possible_that_vaping_deaths_were_actually/ )
Trump policies now acquired their own independent of Trump dynamic: The dynamic of confrontation which, along with the economic crisis of neoliberalism that started in 2008, is somewhat similar to the world dynamic in 1930th.
In other words Trump institutionalized harsh policies toward China and no other administration will be able to change them. Once started, China bashing will have several long term consequences:
The fallout may smash the hard-won U.S.-China “Phase One” trade agreement.
The conflict has now morphed from a regular geopolitical conflict into something more deeper with emotional overtones, with elements of a “clash of civilizations” ideology which as soon as Bothe China and USA populations are indoctrinated is hard to de-escalate from.
This long term political crises will probably combine with the long term economic crisis. As the world economy declines, economic nationalism is likely to rise. And, over time this is likely to deepen the divide between the two countries.
The cost of maintaining the current global neoliberal empire with the center in Washington (which is reflected in the size of the US military budget and the hidden costs associated with imperial policies which probably double this figure) now are above capabilities of the US economy to sustain. So the USA needs help to transition to the “new normal”, and the part of this help that is related to China will now be more difficult to obtain.
Likbez,
“…Surely the virus would begin to naturally mutate in order to beat the bats’ vaccine-enabled immune response ?…”
[Mutations can happen naturally enough, but the only accelerating external stimuli that I can think of off the top of my head is radiation. The evolutionary process that would fit this adaptive order is natural selection rather than mutation. Mutation is natural in and of itself although sometimes environmentally accelerated at the molecular level. Natural selection is how beneficial mutations are propagated from the random mutation process right along with non-beneficial mutations which do not get passed along by selection of the fittest in and of themselves. OTOH, only mutations that degrade survivability are naturally selected out in and of themselves.]
Terry Dude,
Totally, absolutely, and indubitably. THX for the grins.
@ Likbez,
Incorrect theories.
The virus was created by a Putin-sponsored team in a Grupo Modelo laboratory. That is why is it named the CoronaVirus.
Putin then released it in Wuhan to weaken Xi’s regime.
Trump was created by a Putin-sponsored team in an NBC laboratory. That is why it is called a “Reality Virus”.
Putin then released it in Washington to weaken the Republican Party.