“The relationship between America and China was not “normal” before COVID-19. It was in rapid decline. And that decline has left Americans more vulnerable to the disease. The lesson of this plague isn’t that America should stop cooperating with China. It’s that America must rebuild the public-health cooperation that the Trump administration helped destroy.”
Trump’s Break With China Has Deadly Consequences
In November Americans will hopefully have the opportunity to decide whether to replace Trump as president and for that we not only need to assess how he and his administration handled this crisis, but also the ways in which he was responsible for it.
The isolationism he has been putting in place has contributed immensely to how bad COVID19 has been for the United States. As far as disease is concerned, imports and tariffs have nothing to do with it, rather it’s about the tremendous amount of global travel that occurs every single day. Even if you restricted travel to China you can’t stop the possibility of an American being in a conference room in Germany with a person who traveled there from China.
Isolationism does not work, that’s the lesson the greatest generation learned and of which we are being reminded today. Let’s heed the lessons well and revert to the wise decisions of prior administrations, Democrat and Republican.