President Trump is confronting two, unenviable problems posed by the coronavirus pandemic. The first has been well-documented: how to make up for lost time by mass-producing and bulk-purchasing the ventilators and protective equipment hospitals need to care for infected patients and mitigate the spread of the disease.
The second, however, has to do with China. How does the United States simultaneously hold Beijing accountable for its subterfuge about the virus, yet ensure U.S.-China relations remain in a semiproductive state?
Doing so will require navigating a tension-filled political landscape. It already wasn’t difficult to find China hawks in the Beltway even before the coronavirus epidemic reached American soil. The Chinese have become the favorite boogeymen of the Washington foreign policy establishment. This trend began long before Trump’s presidency and will surely only further accelerate now.
In fact, China is one of the few issues that regularly breaks the partisan divide, bringing conservative senators such as Ted Cruz and left-wing senators such as Bernie Sanders together. There is no shortage of valid grievances to pick from: the theft of intellectual property, currency manipulation, illegal dumping of products in the global marketplace, military intimidation in the South China Sea, excessive stonewalling at the United Nations Security Council, the mass internment of the Uighurs — you name it, China has done it.
In a postcoronavirus world, the club of China hawks will induct a whole new membership class. U.S. intelligence community assessments that Beijing deliberately misled the international community about the potency of the coronavirus have already generated a wave of red-faced anger on Capitol Hill. Republicans and Democrats alike want Beijing to pay dearly, and they aren’t willing to allow China to escape blame simply by donating plane loads of (possibly faulty) medical equipment to Europe and falsely projecting itself as a benevolent power.
GOP senators are calling for investigations into what China knew about the disease. Others want to sanction Chinese officials.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other Trump allies have been trying to needle Beijing with phrases such as the “Chinese virus” and the “Wuhan virus” in the hope that they will remind the world of the Asian superpower’s culpability for innocent deaths (Pompeo noticeably took a softer line during yesterday’s coronavirus press conference, saying that “this is not the time for retribution”). Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top advisers on manufacturing, is using the coronavirus as an opportunity to bring his decadeslong anti-China policies further into the political mainstream.
Trump himself has taken a noticeably more conciliatory stance toward the Chinese, emphasizing his friendship with Xi Jinping and complimenting Xi’s leadership for taking decisive action and mobilizing the country in a nationwide mitigation campaign. The president is walking on eggshells whenever the world “China” comes up — and he’s getting considerable criticism for it.
But whatever Trump’s motivations, he’s right to tread lightly. Prudence is called for, not only due to the trade deal that Trump desperately wants to work (one that compels Beijing to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. agricultural products and goods), but also because China has a stranglehold on the very medicine and pharmaceutical agents millions of people depend on for a variety of treatments.
A whopping 35% of the antibiotics the U.S. imported in 2019 were sourced from China. Of the total supply of personal protective equipment the U.S. purchased last year, 30% was purchased in China. The Congressional Research Service reported that “China’s role as a global supplier of medical personal protective equipment (PPE), medical devices, antibiotics, and active pharmaceutical ingredients means reduced production or exports from China could lead to shortages and increased costs of critical medical supplies in the United States.”
Why is this so serious? Because if tension between Washington and Beijing gets overheated (on a health issue or any other issue), China could easily leverage its control over America’s medical imports as a form of retaliation.
And the retaliation would be deadly serious, literally — so serious that pharmacy shelves across the country could go bare as concerned citizens make a run on whatever supplies are available. As ugly as the coronavirus crisis is today, imagine how worse it would be if the Chinese stopped selling masks, gloves, and gowns to American hospitals.
When this health catastrophe dies down, the time for accountability will come. But U.S. policymakers need to be smart about how they seek that accountability. As long as the U.S. is held hostage to China’s domination of the supply chains, dramatic countermeasures will have drastic consequences.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
