Tag: Taiwan

What to do about China?

“China’s much anticipated post-pandemic recovery appears to have flopped, with signs of a significant slowdown after decades of supercharged growth and data flashing warning signs.” Bloomberg “China’s failing recovery”

“Signs of deflation are becoming more prevalent across China, heaping extra pressure on Beijing to reignite growth or risk falling into an economic trap it could find hard to escape.”

What, if anything, should the U.S. response be? That depends on whether we see China as a competitor or an enemy. That should depend on our assessment of China’s objectives. Does China want to expand its territory one way or another, or to expand its influence in the global order? China’s behavior might support either assessment.

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, including the Paracel and Spratly islands, which are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. In 1947 China asserted its claims with a map depicting a U-shaped line covering almost 70 percent of the South China Sea, known as the nine-dash line. In 2016, an Arbitration Tribunal rejected many of China’s maritime claims as lacking a basis in international law.

The UK returned Hong Kong to China July 1, 1997, with the understanding that it would be self-governed independently of the Peoples Republic of China for fifty years. China violated this agreement with its full takeover in 2020.

In 1972 President Richard Nixon confirmed that Taiwan was part of the People’s Republic of China but would continue to govern itself independently until it agreed to merge its government with the mainland’s. In the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the U.S. committed to providing defensive weapons to Taiwan to defend itself from invasion (as opposed to the volunteer absorption into the Peoples Republic envisioned in the One China Act). What we provided instead were heavy weapons irrelevant to Taiwan’s defense but prized by America’s defense industries. “Taiwan-China policy assurances military” The U.S. has more recently seemed to even question its commitment to the One China agreement.

These aggressive moves by China are better seen as solidifying its borders (much in the same way the US worries about its borders with Cuba) than military expansions. On the other hand, China joining the World Trade Organization, pressing for representation in the IMF and World Bank that is more reflective of its economic size, and its Belt and Road, Asian Infrastructure Bank and BRICS initiatives reflect China’s desire to gain status in the global system comparable to that of the U.S. In short, they reflect the behavior of a rising economic competitor.

We seem to be treating China as an enemy rather than the trade and economic competitor they see themselves as. Among sportsmen, competition takes the form of doing your best—of being the best you are capable of. Within our economy we rightly see competition as good and healthy. With fair competition, both sides benefit. The world is made wealthier. Kneecapping our competition is the approach of bad guys. I explored this more fully in my blog “Competing with China”

But China is not competing fairly either. We would be wiser to use the mechanisms of the global system of rules to push and pull them into compliance. We should end our own tariff—industrial policy violation of these rules as well. We might start by restoring the dispute resolution body of the WTO. While there will be genuine security justifications for trade restrictions, they should be very limited.  They should not include taxing steel purchased from Canada. Trade is win, win.

A recent G-7 statement clarified that: “We are not decoupling or turning inwards. At the same time, we recognize that economic resilience requires de-risking and diversifying.” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stressed this message during her recent visit to China. We should facilitate and encourage China’s economic rise as it contributes to our own. The opposite direction—treating China as an enemy—ends in war.

America’s Unipolar period has corrupted us. We demand that others follow rules that we violate ourselves when we don’t find them convenient. We have become a bully. My hope is that we adjust to the fact that we are no longer the world’s sole superpower by strengthening the rules we helped develop and competing fairly under them: “Goodbye unipolar world and good riddance”

Why do we promote growth in other countries?

The world’s twenty largest economies give around $100 billion in aid to poorer countries each year, about 40% of which is to promote economic development. Promoting economic development and growth in other countries is not just charity or to buy peace. More prosperous countries, those that produce more, contribute to our own prosperity more directly as well. 

It is easiest to understand this fact if we think of growth within our own country or state or town. https://wcoats.blog/2023/01/22/trade-once-again/  When you sell something you made and/or own, you benefit from the sale or you wouldn’t have undertaken it. Similarly, the buyer benefits or it wouldn’t have made the purchase. As you have heard or read me and other economists state over and over again, trade is win-win.

But the benefits go beyond the win-win benefits of the transaction itself. Being able to buy some of what I need from others rather than having to make it myself frees up my time to specialize in producing for sale to others what I am best at. In short, and forgive me for repeating this for the umpteen time, world out increases from the specialization that trade enables. As the result of trade world GDP skyrocketed in just 50 years from $1.3 trillion in 1971 to $96.5 trillion in 2021. https://wcoats.blog/2018/03/03/econ-101-trade-in-very-simple-terms/

We benefit from the inventions of entrepreneurs anywhere in the world and should encourage such developments. Pfizer’s Covid vaccine was developing in Germany by BioNTech, with whom Pfizer partners to produce to large quantities demanded. China’s incredible growth over the last thirty years has contributed to our own growth as well. In 1991 the US exported to China $5.2 billion worth of goods, which had grown to $151.i billion in 2021. In 1991 the US imported $12.7 billion worth of goods, which had grown to $506.4 billion in 2021. Following Nixon’s famous trip to and recognition of China in 1972, I remember well a friend who asked “what would we possibly want to buy from China?” We should cheer the fact that China’s economy has grown dramatically to the benefit of us all.

In general, we should welcome and encourage the economic growth of all countries around the world. The exceptions might be for countries that threaten war on their neighbors or us. We might well block the export of our products and related technologies with clear military applications to countries that might pose a military threat. And we might be cautious not to rely on such products from such countries. While these would be sensible policies, they are also easily abused by domestic industries wanting to be protected from competition.

When I was in China in the summer of 2002 to help its compliance with the requirements of the World Trade Organization, those I met were excited about growing into the world trading system. China was a rising power, most certainly not an enemy. How did they become an enemy, if indeed they are. In a word, Taiwan. But I can see nothing China has done to violate their agree with the US about Taiwan as part of One China. If China has become an enemy—a threat to the US—we are largely responsible in my opinion by raising doubts about our commitment to the One China policy.

This is not to say that China has always behaved according to the rule. I and many others were there to help them move in the right direction. Now we have pushed them backward for no good reason. Hopefully the Biden administration is beginning to recognize this and we will return to promoting China’s growth rather than repressing it.   https://wcoats.blog/2022/10/23/competing-with-china/

Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, just arrived in Taiwan. Why is this a big deal? Shouldn’t anyone be able to visit any country that has opened their doors to them? It depends on the context and purpose.

The civil war for control of China was won by the Chinese Communists lead by Mao Zedong in 1949. The opposition, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan and reestablished the Republic of China (POC) there. The civil war was fought on and off between 1927 and 1949 when the victorious Mao established the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and designated Taiwan as its 23rd province. Both the PRC and POC claimed to be the legitimate governments of all of China.

Following President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, “the United States moved to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognize the Republic of China (ROC) in 1979, [and] the United States stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was ‘the sole legal Government of China.’ Sole, meaning the PRC was and is the only China, with no consideration of the ROC as a separate sovereign entity.

“The United States did not, however, give in to Chinese demands that it recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (which is the name preferred by the United States since it opted to de-recognize the ROC). Instead, Washington acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. To this day, the U.S. ‘one China’ position stands: the United States recognizes the PRC as the sole legal government of China but only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China.

“Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 to protect the significant U.S. security and commercial interest in Taiwan. The TRA provided a framework for continued relations in the absence of official diplomatic ties….  The TRA sets forth the American Institute in Taiwan as the corporate entity dealing with U.S. relations with the island; makes clear that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means;… mandates that the United States make available defensive arms to Taiwan; and requires that the United States maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

“What is US one China policy and why does it matter?”

All American Presidents have affirmed this one China commitment while maintaining its “strategic ambiguity”. “U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said [that] the Trump administration is committed to the long-standing ‘One China’ policy as it reviews U.S. policy toward China, but also intends to keep all of its commitments to Taiwan.” June 13, 2017. “USA China-Tillerson committed to one China policy”

More recently: “Joe Biden made a potentially dangerous statement on Monday. In Tokyo, he gave a flat ‘yes’ to a reporter’s question of whether he was willing to ‘get involved militarily to defend Taiwan’. ‘That’s the commitment we made,’ the president claimed. In fact, the United States scrapped its formal commitment to defend Taiwan in 1979…. This is the third time in less than a year that Biden has publicly declared that the United States would use force to keep Beijing from seizing the island.  “Biden defend Taiwan-China invasion”

Pat Buchanan asks: “But if the U.S. went to war to defend Taiwan, what would it mean? We would be risking our own security and possible survival to prevent from being imposed on the island of Taiwan the same regime lately imposed on Hong Kong without any U.S. military resistance.”  “Is Taiwan’s independence worth war?”

What is Pelosi’s objective in going to Taiwan? What does she hope to accomplish with her poke in the Chinese eye? Our interest should be to promote the integration of Taiwan with the rest of China “by peaceful means.” Our diplomacy should be deployed to that end. President Biden’s repeated slips and Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit do not provide the tone nor context for such diplomacy. I believe that her visit to Taiwan is a dangerous mistake. While we would be hard pressed from thousands of miles away to win a war with China, China would suffer enormously as well and probably has better sense than to start such a war. But what is the purpose of such a challenge?

American policy on Taiwan

Following President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1979 the so called One-China policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972: “the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.” “One China policy – U.S. policy”  However, in the Taiwan Relations Act (April 10, 1979), the U.S. stressed its opposition to any effort by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to change conditions in Taiwan by force. Just how that opposition might be expressed has remained ambiguous ever since.

The United States has no treaty obligation to help defend the Republic of China (ROC–Taiwan) against a military attack by the PRC. It is doubtful that the U.S., located thousands of miles from Taiwan, could win an encounter with the PRC only 100 miles away. In recent simulated war games with China the U.S. has lost. “As the US and China continue to posture the key will be Taiwan” A military intervention by the U.S. would create a significant risk of escalation into nuclear war. 

China experts such as Chas Freeman have argued that since Washington long ago agreed that ‘there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it,’ any mainland invasion would simply be a civil war in which America has no right to intervene.” Moreover, risking nuclear war to defend Taiwan would not be in America’s or anyone else’s interest.

Until quite recently, Taiwan’s efforts to build its capacity to defend itself from a mainland attack rested heavily on the presumption that its defense would come from the U.S. “Taiwan’s military has closely mirrored its U.S. counterpart in miniature for years…. The problem with copying the American approach to warfare is that the U.S. military’s doctrine is to project power over great distances and to maximize mobility and networks to take the fight to the enemy with overwhelming superiority. Taiwan, on the other hand, needs the opposite: short-range and defensive systems that can survive an initial bombardment from a larger adversary and that are suitable for deployment close to home in defense of the island should it come under blockade or attack.” “Winning the fight Taiwan cannot afford to lose”

Taiwan’s almost $17 billion-dollar annual defense expenditures keep American weapon’s companies happy but didn’t contribute seriously to Taiwan’s defense. “Taiwanese military analysts have criticized the island for spending too little on defense, and for spending money on eye-catching purchases such as F-16 fighter jets rather than less-flashy weapons systems that would better enable Taiwan to wage asymmetric warfare against the PLA’s superior strength.” “Concerns about Taiwan put focus on islands defensive weakness” This has begun to change in the last few years toward weapons more appropriate to defending Taiwan against a ground assault.

While it is in America’s interest for Taiwan, as well as every other country in the world, to be peaceful, democratic, and prosperous, that interest is not sufficient to risk going to war–not even close. We should hope that the relations between Taiwan and the Peoples Republic of China remain peaceful and consensual whatever form they ultimately take. But should China attempt to “change conditions in Taiwan by force,” how should the U.S. express its opposition.  It is a very sad commentary on the state of American international policy that so many American policy makers routinely conceive of expressing American opposition militarily. We have done so too often to the detriment of American interests.

On the other hand, a Chinese military attack on Taiwan would be a violation of its commitment not “to change conditions in Taiwan by force.” In such an event the U.S. should oppose such actions vigorously with coordinated diplomatic measures. A U.S. China war would certainly stop all trade with China. This would badly hurt both of us. But even without war, if a total trade embargo by the U.S. were joined by the EU, Australia, Japan, Korea, Canada, UK, and most other UN members it would be devastating to China. China could be expelled from all the international organizations it has so proudly joined in recent years. Its global ambitions would be destroyed. Such prospects would surely be as powerful a deterrent to China’s invasion of Taiwan as would the prospect of U.S. military intervention in defense of Taiwan.

American interests are better served by being the best that we can be, i.e., by strengthening our own economy and political system (which is in a dangerous mess at the moment). It would also be helpful if Ted Cruz would stop blocking President Biden’s State Department appointments so that we can strengthening our use of diplomacy and return our military from its foreign adventures to the defense of our homeland.

See Jon Schwarz’s interesting review:  WE’VE ALL PRETENDED ABOUT TAIWAN FOR 72 YEARS. IT MAY NOT WORK ANY LONGER   “Taiwan, China, nuclear weapons”

National Defense

American military strength (an important aspect of our national security) depends on the size, training, and equipment (weapons) of our military, which is very much dependent on the size and efficiency of our economy, which pays for it.  Devoting more of our productive capacity to the military reduces our economic capacity. Getting the balance right between military and nonmilitary uses of our resources is very important.  Knowing what military capacity we need to insure our defense requires assessing the sources of threats to our national security and what motivates their deployment.

The cold war was a confrontation with international communism, most heavily concentrated in the Soviet Union. This was an ideological enemy of free market, capitalist countries, whose goal was to spread its ideology to the entire world. There is no such ideological enemy today. The Chinese government wants to be strong and prosperous and doesn’t care whether anyone else follows their model or not. They do want the rules for global trade and interactions to permit their own domestic model. We need to engage China fairly in establishing international rules that serve everone.

Historically wars were generally about territory and political control, usually about moving boarders a bit this way or that.  The Mogul, Roman, Persian, British, Ottoman and other empires existed largely to extract economic gain from the territories they ruled, something more peacefully enjoyed today via free (or freer) trade.  The mere threat of war and the creation and maintenance of potential enemies is also a useful device for rallying countries around their leaders and for keeping the money flowing to their “defense” industries–think of Mr. Putin, Xi Jinping and the U.S. military/industrial complex.

American defense today requires military strength sufficient to deter any country from successfully attacking the United States. It does not require the 800 military bases that we maintain around the world.  It did not require and was not enhanced by our many wars that followed the infamous and very damaging Viet Nam war (Lebanon 1982-4, Grenada 1983, Panama 1989-90, Gulf War 1990-91, Somali 1992-5, Bosnia 1992-5, Haiti 1994-5, Kosovo 1998-9, Afghanistan 2001-date, Iraq 2003-11, 2014-date, Somali 2007-21, Libya 2011, 2015-20, Syria 2014-date, War on Terror in various places). War with China would be quite a different matter. “The delusions of high tech warfare”

Fareed Zakaria unloaded on our war industry last month: “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin outlined his key concern. ‘China is our pacing threat,’ he said. He explained that for the past 20 years, the United States had been focused on the Middle East while China had been modernizing its military. ‘We still maintain the edge,’ he noted, ‘and we’re going to increase the edge going forward.’ Welcome to the new age of bloated Pentagon budgets, all to be justified by the great Chinese threat.

“What Austin calls America’s ‘edge’ over China is more like a chasm. The United States has about 20 times the number of nuclear warheads as China. It has twice the tonnage of warships at sea, including 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers compared with China’s two carriers (which are much less advanced). Washington has more than 2,000 modern fighter jets compared with Beijing’s roughly 600, according to national security analyst Sebastien Roblin. And the United States deploys this power using a vast network of some 800 overseas bases. China has three. China spends around $250 billion on its military, a third as much as the United States.”  “The Pentagon is using China as an excuse for huge new budgets”  As noted above, over-investing in the military results in a smaller economy overall.

The latest debate is whether we should make our commitment to go to war with China to defend the independence of Taiwan explicit or leave it implied and ambiguous. In 1979 the U.S. recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China and acknowledged that Taiwan was part of China (slightly fuzzy diplomatic language). So would American national security be enhanced by an explicit credible commitment to go to war with China, if necessary, to preserve the independence of Taiwan? China is a nuclear power. Going to war with China (World War III if we could get anyone else to join us) would inflect enormous damage on the U.S. whether it became nuclear or not, even if we won. In my opinion it would be simply insane to take such risks.

Would the U.S. deter China by being tough enough?  As Doug Bandow put it: “America’s antagonists saw something very different than weakness…. Stupidity and arrogance. Poor judgment. Refusal to admit mistakes. An almost demented willingness to sacrifice America’s future in a desperate attempt to redeem the nation’s tragic past. A better way not to show weakness would be to stop doing ‘stupid shit,’ as Obama suggested.

“China’s Xi Jinping and his colleagues in Zhongnanhai likely have a far more objective and practical take on U.S. policy: Endless wars by Washington are good for Beijing. The Chinese would love to see the US pour trillions more dollars and thousands more lives into new conflicts. Invade Iran? Please! Maybe occupy Syria too? Lebanon also needs fixing. Don’t forget the need to redeem Afghanistan. Then there is the problem of Russia in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere: go for it!”  https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/03/23/the-failure-of-huff-and-puff-foreign-policy/

But China (and Russia in Ukraine) has been behaving badly–claiming this little island in the China Sea and that one as its own, not to mention the ever-present risk of invading Taiwan. Even if the forced takeover of Taiwan by the PRC would not threaten our national defense, shouldn’t we care? Shouldn’t we care about the abhorrent genocide by the Chinese government against its Uighur Muslim minority in its western province of Xinjiang? Of course, we should, but we should reject the presumption of our neocon friends and the military/industrial complex we keep fat and rich that these and other interests can only be addressed militarily. See my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan: “My Travels to Baghdad”

The creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions and other international cooperative agreements and institutions after World War II were meant to provide dispute resolution mechanisms other than wars. President Biden is committed to rebuilding these neglected institutions and strengthening and reenergizing our diplomatic institutions and initiatives. We can confront China more effectively and more realistically together with most of the rest of the world using the tools of diplomacy rather than of war. If the people of Taiwan chose to integrate their governance more fully with that of the PRC, that is their choice and their business. But if China invades Taiwan or otherwise forces such an integration, China should know the economic and political price they would pay. In my opinion, such a declaration would be far more effective in deterring such behavior by China than a fuzzy uncertain threat of war. It is encouraging that Congress seems on the verge of reclaiming its War Powers provided by the Constitution.

It is worth remembering the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. against our war in Vietnam delivered April 4, 1967. https://kingandbreakingsilence.org/

Covid-19: What should Uncle Sam do?

On February 29 the first person in the United States died from Covid-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, the so-called novel coronavirus first observed in Wuhan, China.  On March 12, three more people succumbed from this disease bringing the total to 41. Ten days later on March 22, 117 died bringing the total to 419 as the exponential growth of Covid-19 deaths continues. Globally 15,420 had died by midday March 23 and deaths are rising fast.

How and where will this end?  Shutting the economy down and keeping everyone isolated in place until the virus “dies” for lack of new victims would ultimately kill everyone from starvation (if not boredom).  This pandemic will only end (stabilize with the status of the flu, which currently kills about 34,000 per year in the U.S.) when an effective vaccine is developed and administered to almost everyone. This will take one year to eighteen months if it is discovered today, and that is if we are lucky that the safety and effectiveness trials go according to plan. Without a vaccine, the pandemic will “end” when most of us have acquired immunity to it as a result of having and surviving (as almost everyone will) covid-19 –acquiring so called herd immunity.  This assumes that having and surviving the disease will immunize us. This is generally the case with viruses but has not yet been established for SARS-CoV-2.

Our hospitals and medical services could not handle the patient load if every one contracted this disease over too short a period, so it is important to slow down the pace of infection–so called flattening the curve (which could spike quickly as you see from the opening paragraph). The ideal strategy is to allow the infection of those with low risk of serious illness or death to speed up herd immunity with minimum demand on our limited health facilities, while protecting and treating the most vulnerable. The young and healthy are least vulnerable and the old and health-impaired are the most vulnerable.  We should reopen schools and restaurants after Easter and gradually restart our cultural entertainment lives adhering to higher standards of hygiene and public interaction. This would be ideal both with regard to speeding up herd immunity and with regard to minimizing that damage to the economy.

What should government do?

I am from the government and I am here to help (it is risky to attempt humor in these times, but what the hell). “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned GOP senators that the unemployment rate could spike to nearly 20 percent if they fail to act dramatically…. The United States is expected to lose 4.6 million travel-related jobs this year as the coronavirus outbreak levies an $809 billion blow to the economy, according to a projection released yesterday by the U.S. Travel Association…. Research from Imperial College London, endorsed by the U.K. government, suggests that 2.2 million would die in the United States and 510,000 would die in Britain if nothing is done by governments and individuals to stop the pandemic.” “six-chilling-estimates-underscore-danger-of-coronavirus-to-public-health-and-the-economy”

“Infectious disease experts do not yet know exactly how contagious or deadly the novel coronavirus is. But compared to SARS and MERS, SARS-CoV-2 [as the novel coronavirus is now labeled] has spread strikingly fast: While the MERS outbreak took about two and a half years to infect 1,000 people, and SARS took roughly four months, the novel coronavirus reached that figure in just 48 days.”  “Mapping the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak”

The U.S. does not have the medical equipment or hospital beds that will be needed for those anticipated to need ICU facilities.  And as poorly equipped medical staff fall ill from their exposure to the Coronavirus, we will run out of enough doctors and nurses to care for them forcing us to default to the unpleasant realities of medical triage where doctors begin to assess and choose those that have a higher probability of survival and to leave the weakest to fend for themselves. This has already started in Italy.

So, what should the government do? Its response might be considered under three categories:  a) Stop or slow the spread of covid-19; b) Help state and local health service providers care for those needing it; and c) minimize the damage to the economy (i.e. to those whose income is affected by the disease or the measures taken to slow the spread of the disease).

As with all good policies, as the government determines its immediate approaches to the crisis, it should keep one eye on the longer run implications of the policies adopted. It should balance the most effective immediate actions with the minimization of what economists call moral hazard in the future.  The simplest and best-known example of moral hazard results from the now hopefully banished practice of governments bailing out banks when they fail as a way of protecting depositors. This one way bet for the banks–they profit when they win their bets and the government bails them out when they lose them–encouraged banks to take on excessive risks. In the U.S. we have replace bank bail outs with deposit insurance and efficient bank resolution (bankruptcy) procedures. “Key Issues in Failed Bank Resolution”

If economists do nothing else, we pay very close attention to incentives, particularly those created by government rules and regulations (including taxes and subsidies).  Government financial assistance must also be carefully designed to be temporary, recognizing the danger that expansions of government into the economy in emergencies have the bad habit of becoming permanent.

From these general considerations our response should be guided by these principles: Measures should be effective with the least cost. They should be narrowly targeted. They should be temporary. The cost of financial assistance should be shared by all involved–no bailouts.

Flatten the curve 

The government’s first priorities must be to slow the spread of covid-19 while supporting the medical needs of those contracting it.  Limiting the number of infected will limit the resulting deaths (guesstimated to be around 1% of those infected by this virus). Slowing the rate at which people are infected–flattening the curve–will reduce the peak demand for hospital beds and related services until a vaccine is found (once one or several candidates are discovered today, it will take 12 to 18 months of tests to establish its safety and effectiveness and manufacture enough to start administering it).

Despite clear warnings that the novel coronavirus posed serious threats to the U.S. for which we were not prepared, President Trump failed to act until very recently, calling the scare a Democratic plot as recently as February 28. “Trump-says-the-coronavirus-is-the-democrats-new-hoax”  “U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.” “US-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic”

Countries that acted quickly to identify and isolate those infected by the virus have generally succeeding in slowing its spread without shutting their economies down.  South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have tested widely and quarantined those testing positive, many of whom were asymptomatic. Their economies have not been shut down. Restaurants and bars remain open as do schools in Singapore and Taiwan.  New cases in S Korea have fallen to very low levels two weeks ago and active cases have been declining since March 11 as more people recover than acquire the disease. On March 22 only two people died from the disease.  Cases and deaths have remained low in Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. The following describes the lesson’s from Singapore’s success: plan ahead, respond quickly, test a lot, quarantine the sick, communicate honestly with the public, live normally:  “Why-Singapore’s-coronavirus-response-worked–and-what-we-can-all-learn”

As a result of the U.S. failing to act earlier, the potential for this approach has been reduced in the U.S.  Nonetheless, the government should urgently remove its barriers to testing, increase the supply of tests, and pay most of the cost of testing. In order to discourage frivolous testing those being tested should pay a small amount of the cost (e.g. ten dollars per test).  Even today (March 21) very few Americans are tested despite frantic catch up efforts by the U.S. government.  “A-government-monopoly-led-to-botched-covid-19-test-kits-but-private-labs-are-now-saving-the-day” Positive test results (“cases”) in the U.S. are rising rapidly (983 new cases on March 16 jumped to 9,339 on March 22, for a total of 33,546). However, as so little testing has been possible, there is no way we can know whether this dramatic increase reflects increases in infection or only the increase in the identification of existing infections. “Peggy Noonan gets tested–finally”

As a result, the government has urged people to stay home, and most entertainment centers (theaters, cinemas, restaurants, gyms, and bars) have closed, and a few state governors are mandating it.  Many international flights have been cancelled.  Aside from grocery stores and pharmacies, most shops and malls have closed. A controversy is raging over whether closing schools does more harm than good. Among the arguments against it is that because serious illness and death among the young is rare but they can spread the disease (to their families at home and others), attempting to block their infection interferes with herd immunization (protection from infection as the result of a large proportion of the population becoming immune as the result of recovery from infection).

The economic impact of those drastic measures will be explored below, but the government must now urgently prepare for the surge of covid-19 patients promising to overwhelm our brave medical health care workers, medical supplies and hospital beds even with these draconian measures. Priorities must be given to properly equipping medical service providers and training their replacements as they fall ill. Hospital beds and respirators and other equipment needed for the more seriously ill must be urgently produced, in part by turning out and away, less seriously ill patients and those with non-emergency, elective treatments. We can delay the investigation into why these steps where not taken two months ago when the need was identified.

Care for the sick

The government should support the market’s natural incentives to develop better treatments and ultimately a vaccine (i.e. profit). This raises challenging policy issues. Protecting the patent rights of firms developing treatments protects the profit incentive for them to do so. However, the sharing of research findings, thus threatening such patents, can greatly accelerate the discovery of helpful medicines or procedures. Hopefully rights can be established and protected that both encourage drug development and cooperative information sharing.

The failure of the U.S. government to provide for or allow significant testing for covid-19 is a scandal. The government should get out of the way. “Coronavirus-and-big-government” Its claim last week and the week before that testing was opening up is sadly not true.  By March 19th the U.S. with a population of 327 million had only tested 103,945 people (0.03%).  S. Korea with a population of 51.5 mil. had tested 316,664 by March 20th (0.6%) and Germany with a population of 82.9 mil. had tested 167,000 by March 15th (0.2%)  “Covid-19-why-arent-we-prepared”

President Trump’s trade war has damaged world’s ability to fight covid-19 in general but more specifically his tariffs on medical supplies are contributing to their shortage in the U.S.  “The US-China trade war has forced US buyers to reduce purchases of medical supplies from China and seek alternative sources. US imports of Chinese medical products covered by the Trump administration’s 25 percent tariffs dropped by 16 percent in 2019 compared with two years earlier.”  “Tariffs-disrupted-medical-supplies-critical-us-coronavirus-fight”

Save the economy

Having missed the opportunity to flatten the curve via testing and targeted quarantines, the U.S. has taken much more drastic steps to restrict public interactions, shutting down the entertainment, educational, and transportation sectors of the economy. These should result in temporary interruptions of the supply of these services that will bounce back when the restrictions are lifted. Some output will be lost forever (lost classroom time, and restaurant meals) but others can be recouped or at least restored to original levels (rates). Clothing and other retail items not purchased during the shut down can be purchased later.

What the economy will look like afterward (hopefully only a few months) will depend on several factors. The first is the extent to which our public behavior is altered permanently. Home movies might permanently replace some part of our usual attendance to the cinema. Teleconferencing might permanently reduce meeting travel or accelerate the existing trend in that direction, etc.

The policies being debated in congress at this moment for protecting individuals and firms from the financial cost of the temporary shutdown can profoundly affect the future composition and condition of the economy. Every big firm out there is working on how they can tap some of the taxpayer’s money that government will be giving out. Those pushing government interventions into new areas on a permanent basis will exploit the occasion to slip in their favorite policies. Unfortunately, once the government moves into an area– it rarely withdraws. Almost 19 years later, the horrible Patriot Act, adopted when a scared public was willing to trade off liberty for security, is still largely with us.

Our public interest would be served by incentives that lead those who might be sick with covid-19 to stay home rather than risk infecting others, and by policies that enable viable firms that lost customers and individuals who stayed home to bridge their financial gap until returning to normal. Affected firms and individuals will continue to have expenses (food, rent, mortgages, etc.) but no incomes. They should be provided with the funds to meet these expenses in order to return to life/work when the lights go back on. The sharing of the cost of those funds must be considered politically fair and must incentivize the desired behavior. Everyone must have some skin in the game (a share of the cost). Adopting measure that fill those criteria will not be easy.

The government (taxpayers) should cover much of the cost of the covid-19 related medical services and hospital costs, including very widespread testing. Medical service providers should be tested daily (e.g., several doctors have died from covid-19 in Italy). Anyone staying at home and testing positive should receive sick leave paid for by the government.

Assistance to companies and the self-employed should be as targeted as possible on those forced to reduce or stop operations as a result of covid-19. Where possible, assistance should take the form of loans to companies that continue to pay wages to their employees even if not working. Restrictions should be placed on how such loans are used (no stock buy backs, or salary increases during the life of the loans). Bank and lending regulators should allow and in fact encourage temporary loan forbearance by the lenders on temporary arrears from otherwise viable firms. “Bailout-stimulus-rescue-check” One small businessman convincingly argued that wage subsidies that keep working on the payroll are better than generous unemployment insurance, which makes it easier for firms to lay off their workers. “Dear-congress-i’m-a-small-business-owner-heres-what-my-business-needs-to-survive”

What about the big companies, such as Boeing, the airlines, the Hotel Chains, and Cruise ship operators? Yes, they should be included in the loan forbearance and incentive loan programs, but they should receive no special consideration beyond that. If government (partially) guaranteed loans through banks to pay wages and other fixed expenses for a few months are not enough to finance a firm’s expenses without income for a few months it is probably not viable in the long run anyway and should be resolved through bankruptcy as were GM and Chrysler in earlier financial crises. This would wipe out the stakes of owners while preserving the ability of the firm to return to profitable operation with new owners. “Bailing-out-well-if-bail-out-we-must”

Monetary policy

The American economy (and elsewhere) is suffering in the first instance a supply shock (sick people unable to work and produce). This fall in income from supply disruptions also reduces demand. Cutting the Fed’s already low interest rate target to almost zero is a mistake. No one will undertake new or expanded investments because of it, and its impact on reducing the return on pensions and other savings will, if anything, reduce spending. The last decade of very low interest rate policy targets has already contributed to excessive corporate debt and inflated stock prices (recently deflated back to normal).

Injecting liquidity via new lending facilities and international swap lines, as the Fed is now undertaking, is the correct response. If lenders allow their borrowers to delay repayments for a few months, they need to replace that missing income somehow (rather than calling in nonperforming loans and bankrupting the borrower). The Federal reserve should substitute for that income by lending to banks freely against the good collateral of government debt or government guaranteed debt.

“The vital need of everyone in the economy, from the corner drugstore to the local transit authority to the mightiest multinational, is liquidity: credit to meet payroll and other key obligations so as to remain solvent until the end of what we all must hope is a finite crisis.”  “Here’s-an-economic-aid-plan-better-than-mitch-McConnell’s”

Macroeconomic policy

As noted above, the government’s help should be narrowly targeted to the direct victims of covid-19.  A general fiscal or monetary stimulus is not needed or desirable.  Nonetheless, it will add to the federal debt that is already bloated by years of annual deficits at the peak of a business cycle when a surprise is customary and appropriate.

“The United States is not confronted with a financial crisis and a follow-on crisis of demand, as in 2008 or 1929. Rather, previously robust consumption and production are being deliberately halted to save lives. Thus, traditional tools of monetary and fiscal stimulus, such as zero interest rates and direct cash aid to households, are unlikely to prove decisive. You can’t shop, or invest in new construction, while on lockdown.”  “Here’s-an-economic-aid-plan-better-than-mitch-McConnell’s”

This is a dangerous period both for our personal health and for the health of the economy. Affected firms should be helped in order for them to continue paying their employees and to remain solvent until they can return to production. But the United States has failed to prepare properly and is handling the fight against covid-19 poorly. We need to reopen our schools and restaurants and return to normal at a reasonable pace while allowing herd immunity to develop at a faster pace while supporting the most rapid development of a vaccine possible. Don’t fight this wildfire with our eyes shut while enhancing the dangers of future fires from ill-advised measures undertaken in this emergency environment.

Stay strong everyone. We will all get through this.