Pompeo tells Salena Zito the world must ‘impose costs on China’ for coronavirus

“The world has to join together to impose costs on China until they change their behavior in a way so that they behave like a nation that is worthy of what they claim,” he said. “They claim they want to be a superpower, and yet, they behave in a way that’s inconsistent with the duties they have not only under the World Health Organization regulations, but just as good members of society, to share data and to be transparent.”

He said, “Then, when those two things are accomplished, then the president will make a decision about what is the best way to approach making sure that China understands the consequences of the actions that it undertook and an effort to provide compensation to those here in the United States that have been harmed.”

About his trip to Israel, he said, “I wanted to talk to the prime minister about China’s influence there in Israel and make clear to them that these risks are real and that the United States and Israel democracies can work together to come up with really good outcomes.”

During the interview, Pompeo also discussed his trip to Israel in more detail and explained how the coronavirus is changing the geopolitical landscape across the world, including in Iran and Russia. He also discussed how it was affecting the energy sector.

At the conclusion of the formal part of the interview, the native Californian opened up about the passing of his father Wayne Pompeo, 89, who died on April 30, and he subsequently granted permission to print his comments. Like everyone else who has lost a family member or friend during the coronavirus pandemic, the secretary of state was unable to be there with him when he passed.

Pompeo explained his father was, overall, reasonably healthy until seven weeks ago, when he took a fall and bumped his head. “He just kind of deteriorated after that,” he said. “Never really came back. So, it was really sad. It was unexpected in the sense of the doctors thought he’d likely come back and recover, but just never did.”

“I was unable to get out there, because he lives out … same house I grew up, out in Southern California, and we couldn’t get out there,” he said, adding that the family will do a memorial service whenever California opens back up. “He was quite a character. He was a hardcore Democrat. I loved him dearly. He was very proud of what I’ve done and was always someone who kept me humble and kept me grounded. And I loved him for that. But he’s now with my mom in heaven, and I’ll miss him.”

The transcript of the Q&A is below.

Washington Examiner: Can you summarize what you believe we know about China’s responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic?

Pompeo: Let me start with the facts that we know for sure. We know this. We know that the virus originated in Wuhan, China. We don’t know precisely where inside of that, but we know that the Chinese Communist Party has been ruthless in denying us the ability to determine that very fact. Whether that began with their failure to provide information in a timely fashion to the World Health Organization. Whether that was them coercing the World Health Organization to be quiet about the scope and nature of this pandemic or taking doctors who were prepared to talk about what they were seeing in their offices and in their laboratories and denying them the ability to speak publicly, essentially disappearing them. Those are all things we know for sure. And then, we know that there were cases as far back, for sure, as December.

And then, in the upcoming period, in the time from January forward, China began to stockpile the equipment that they would need to confront that virus in their country. And then, when the city of Wuhan itself became so contagious that they knew that the spread was inevitable, they closed down Wuhan itself but, at the same time, allowed citizens from Wuhan and elsewhere to travel all across the world. What inevitably led to the enormous spread in what we now have as a pandemic that originated there in Wuhan, China.

All of those are facts. And they are important because we still don’t have the samples of the virus that we need in order for folks to test their vaccine against the original samples. We still don’t have that available. There’s still a great deal of information that we need about the origin who was patient zero.

Those are answers that we need, not because of politics, not because of some rivalry, but because scientists and epidemiologists need that information to save lives and keep people healthy and help us get our economy all around the globe and in the United States back going again.”

Washington Examiner: Given those thoughts, what actions could the United States take to hold the government accountable?

Pompeo: The first thing we have to do is get through this. The second thing we have to do is make sure the world knows that we still have a Chinese Communist Party that is failing to provide this information. The risk that this pandemic comes back in the fall or that there could be another pandemic. We know China has done this poorly before in SARS. We’ve had other viruses come from this place.

The world has to join together to impose costs on China until they change their behavior in a way so that they behave like a nation that is worthy of what they claim. They claim they want to be a superpower, and yet, they behave in a way that’s inconsistent with the duties they have not only under the World Health Organization regulations, but just as good members of society, to share data and to be transparent.

Then, when those two things are accomplished, then the president will make a decision about what is the best way to approach making sure that China understands the consequences of the actions that it undertook and an effort to provide compensation to those here in the United States that have been harmed.

Not only individuals who’ve lost their lives or become ill, all of those who’ve had economic harm and the damage that’s been done to the American economy. We’ve got a number of ideas we’ve presented to the president about how to begin to think about that. But for the moment, we’re very focused on the near-term challenges.

Washington Examiner: Is there an alliance to put pressure on China to get these answers with other governments?

Pompeo: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. Two things. First, the answer is yes. We’ve seen the Australians, we’ve seen a handful of European countries begin to recognize that there has to be a straight up, no politics, real access international investigation — an inquiry to see what happened here. How this took place. The history of it, where it began, for purposes of making sure we can solve the current problem and preventing the next one from taking place.

But Salena, you can’t also look at the coronavirus or COVID-19 in isolation. This is symptomatic of the problems of the Chinese Communist Party and the risk that they present to the world. When you have a nation that refuses to be reciprocal in the way that it trades, when you have a country that denies journalists access, when you have a nation that fails to live up to its promises. Whether that’s the promises they made to the people of Hong Kong or the promises that they made to [the] United States when they said they wouldn’t arm the South China Sea, the Chinese Communist Party has made a series of commitments, and they’ve failed to live up to their obligations.

And the world needs to understand that, needs to recognize the costs that are associated with that. And I hope that there will be a significant alliance that understands that democracies will lead this world back from the coronavirus. And those that continue to engage in behavior that imposes costs on the world … autocracies inevitably result in exactly what we’ve seen. Things like this with the coronavirus or when we saw what took place in Chernobyl.

Countries that don’t have openness and transparency, the world needs to recognize that there is a stark difference there. And those like-minded nations need to work together to ensure that we grow the global economy and protect freedom around the world in the next decades by joining together.

Washington Examiner: So, that’s something you’re doing in the back channels?

Pompeo: I’ll give you a good real-time example. So, this week, I was on the phone with a group of democracies that represent a significant piece of the globe’s GDP with my Indian counterpart, my South Korean counterpart, Brazil … I said India. Goodness. Japan, Australia. These are countries who all are staring at the same problems, that recognize that for decades, we ignored the threat from the Chinese Communist Party. That’s not partisan, that was both political parties ignored the risks connected to the Chinese Communist Party, who now are coming to recognize that the world needs to take a different path as we move forward from this current pandemic.

Washington Examiner: On Iran, what is your assessment of what is going on there? Especially because in the beginning, there were news reports things were pretty bad there. And then, you add the sanctions and then the oil — do you have a sense of what state the country and their people are in?

Pompeo: So, back to first principles. Our mission there is to make sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and to reduce their capacity to inflict terror on the world. So, our efforts there were to get out of the JCPOA, which led inevitably to Iran possessing a nuclear bomb. And then, second, to deny them the resources they needed to foment terror around the world. We’ve made progress on each of those fronts.

Iran has been increasingly challenged. They’ve been challenged because they lied about the extent and scope and scale of the impact of COVID-19 inside of their country, as they still continue to underreport what’s taking place. Now that oil is trading at what it is today, $25 a barrel and maybe $29 on Brent Crude, their economy will be even more challenged. And what we hope that does is it focus [the] mind of the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime has plenty of money. The ayatollah has got hundreds of millions of dollars stashed all over the world.

Their leadership has demonstrated their ability to steal, their kleptocracy. They have the resources and money that they need. They’ve just chosen to use them for corrupt purposes, for terror purposes, and not to use that money to take care of their own people. What I hope comes out of this is the Iranian people will gain even more clarity about the need to work hard to change the behavior of the current regime.

Washington Examiner: Obviously, this is a challenging time. But does that present geopolitical opportunities, but also dangers in your assessment?

Pompeo: Yes, it does. There’s certainly a real risk associated with this. I think the world has been chastened by the speed and difficulty of containing this virus, but the opportunities are enormous. I think this shines a harsh light on the Chinese Communist Party. I think it makes clear that international organizations aren’t necessarily good just because they’re a multilateral organization. We’ve seen the abject failure of the World Health Organization to do … it had one job. To protect the world from a pandemic. And it didn’t get it done.

And so, there’s an opportunity. There’s an opportunity to take the resources that have been applied to these problems and use them in a way that makes sense. I’ll give you one more example. I think it’s also demonstrated that President Trump, since he started his campaign, his vision for making America strong at home was right. We saw what happened when we didn’t have the capacity to make some of the equipment that we needed in our time of trouble. And I think you’ll see American businesses all across the world begin to recognize that they need to do more here at home.

Just last night, a good example, a company called TSMC that makes the world’s state-of-the-art semiconductor fabricators is going to build a $12 [billion] to $20 billion facility in Arizona. That’s great news. We need that technology. It has a huge national security imperative that we could supply those wafers and those semiconductors to the world from the United States. Those are the kinds of things that I do think present a real opportunity for the United States. And each of us, certainly me and the State Department, others, need to seize that opportunity for good.

Washington Examiner: There’s a lot of worry in places like Pennsylvania, about the difficulties facing natural gas producers in the United States with the decline in oil and gas prices. Can you talk about our surplus in gas from a foreign policy perspective?

Pompeo: So, it’s been a boon to me as America’s most senior diplomat to have America with abundant natural gas that we have been selling all across the world. And abundant crude oil that comes out of places like the Marcellus Shale there in Pennsylvania. So, this has been an unmitigated good. When I travel the world and I see countries are trying to figure out how they’re going to respond to what the American secretary of state asks, I’ve got knowledge that they are dependent upon us and our resources, that they want access to those resources. In turn, we make money from selling them.

It’s hard times in the oil and gas industry. That’s the business that I was in from 2005 until I left to go into Congress. So, I know the small, independent drillers’ side of that business very well. It’s hard times for them right now, very, very difficult. You had a huge supply surplus matched with the world’s largest percentage decrease in demand that we’ve ever seen over a very short period of time. So, we’ve worked to try and convince those who are producing around the world to limit their production. We’ve worked to fill up our reservoirs here, in the end, to get Pennsylvania’s natural gas business and its oil business back in place.

We’ve got to get people out of their homes, back to work, building up demand here in the United States and all across the globe. When that demand comes back, America’s energy producers will figure out a way to make money delivering that important resource. Not only to those of us here in the States, but delivering it all across the world as well. It is a central part of American diplomacy to have a strong and powerful energy industry right here at home.

Washington Examiner: How important is it, in your assessment, for our researchers and scientists to find a vaccine here before China?

Pompeo: Well, I hope it’s fast, wherever it’s from. And I mean that most sincerely. We are hopeful that someone will crack the code just as quickly as they can and then get it through human trials and get a safe and effective vaccine ready to be delivered. The United States, you saw the president’s announcement today, has stood up a task force to get a vaccine at warp speed. We’ll be working with partners around the world to do that. So, we’ll be working with scientists all across the world, including scientists in China, to try to deliver that outcome to the world.

In the meantime, we’re building up manufacturing capacity, all the things one would need to do, so that when the vaccine is identified, we can get the tens of millions of doses that we’re going to need to vaccinate people all across the world. I’m less concerned about who finds that vaccine, but rather about that we get it done just as quickly as we can.

Washington Examiner: What was the significance, the importance of going to Israel at this moment?

Pompeo: So, I went for three reasons. One, this was the second anniversary of President Trump’s decision to open our embassy there. So, it was two years on. And I had made a commitment that I would be back there on the second anniversary, and I got pretty close to that. And it was glorious. It was glorious to be there. They’re struggling with COVID too, although they’ve done nice work. But the streets were quieter than I had ever seen them in Jerusalem when I traveled there that day. Then, I went to talk about three other things.

One, I wanted to talk to them about the platform for President Trump’s plan for Middle East peace and how we were going to work on that together. Second, we have a lot of work that needs to be done to counter the threats problem. Not only the world’s largest sponsor of terror, Iran, but the world’s most anti-Semitic nation, Iran. So, we began and continue to refine our plans on how to make sure that we reduce risk to Israel and the world from Iran.

And then, finally, I wanted to talk to the prime minister about China’s influence there in Israel and make clear to them that these risks are real and that the United States and Israel democracies can work together to come up with really good outcomes. And make sure that the people of Israel aren’t subject to the adverse impact of having a significant Chinese state-owned set of enterprises operating inside of their infrastructure there in Israel.

Washington Examiner: How well did it go? How was it received?

Pompeo: So, these were good conversations. Look, I speak with the Israeli leadership with great frequency. It’s the first time we had a chance to do so in person in quite some time. I think we have a common understanding of our threats, whether that is Iran or the Chinese Communist Party. I can’t talk about the details, but we agreed on a set of actions that each of our two nations would take.

And then, Prime Minister Netanyahu asked me too, to see if there aren’t ways that our businesses can work more closely together, whether that’s folks who are working on the vaccine or technology businesses. Israel has a thriving technology sector. He would like to see more American investment in Israeli companies, more Israeli investment in American companies. And we’ve always had this close national security relationship. Prime Minister Netanyahu and I began to think about how we might make our economic relationship even stronger as well.

Washington Examiner: And what about Russia? What is your assessment of the relationship right now with the United States, and how they’re doing during the virus?

Pompeo: So, they’ve really struggled. Moscow, in particular, continues to struggle with the virus. When the president spoke with President Putin, perhaps a week ago, maybe a little more now, the president committed to providing significant assistance to them. Some testing equipment, as well as ventilators. That equipment is on its way. We’re excited about our ability to try and help them work their way through this virus.

I’ve worked with the Russians from the time I was the CIA director. There are places where our two countries can work together. I worked closely with them taking down terror plots. They helped us, saved American lives by providing us information. We helped them take down a big terror plot that was set to take place in St. Petersburg.

But there’s lots of places that the Russians are acting in ways that are inconsistent with what we know to be right as a democracy and a freedom-loving people. Whether that’s a continued role in Syria, where there are still 6 or 8 million people who’ve been displaced from their homes. And Russians are doing enormous harm, creating enormous chaos there. They’re still occupying Crimea and southeast Ukraine. These are the kinds of things that are just unacceptable to democratic nations around the world. And when we engage with the Russians on these issues, we make clear our expectations.