Trump has yet to adopt all these policies. But the fallout from the global outbreak, which coincides with his reelection bid, could motivate him to do so. “Coronavirus is the intersection of 3 issues @realDonaldTrump has been right about all along: border control, American manufacturing, China hawk,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted recently, in a preview of a possible campaign message.
Read: The strongest evidence yet that America is botching coronavirus testing
And, if implemented, such policies could upend global supply chains and renew a push to unwind economic integration between the world’s two largest economies, which could significantly reverse globalization. (This had slowed somewhat after the U.S. and China struck an interim trade agreement in January.) “Globalism,” with its unwieldy … complex systems tied to yet more complex systems,” could be the biggest “casualty in the war on the coronavirus,” Curtis Ellis, the policy director of America First Policies, the nonprofit arm of a pro-Trump super PAC, wrote last month.
These arguments have been echoed by China hard-liners in Congress. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Rubio and another Republican senator, Josh Hawley, have proposed separate bills to lessen America’s reliance on China for medical supplies. Whether the administration will support these initiatives isn’t clear. During a congressional hearing last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he shared Rubio’s concern about America’s reliance on China for active pharmaceutical ingredients. Yet he cautioned that disentangling globalized supply chains in favor of domestic manufacturing can’t be accomplished “overnight” and could raise health-care costs for Americans.
Rubio has previously warned of the risks that China poses to the U.S. health-care industry and challenged Beijing on numerous issues, including its efforts to suppress pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. He told me that “the depletion of America’s manufacturing sector has left us with a huge national-security vulnerability,” necessitating “a 21st-century, pro-American industrial policy.”
The bids to break free from America’s bonds with Beijing, moreover, go well beyond the medical sector. Mac Thornberry, the ranking Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee, has stated that while “we want to get coronavirus contained [and] eliminated as fast as we can … maybe we can also take this opportunity” to reduce America’s reliance on China for defense-related products and components.
When I asked Rubio why he was taking a more confrontational approach to China during a global emergency that seemed to call for international cooperation, he maintained that “the Chinese Communist Party has proven it is not a reliable or responsible global power.”
China “impeded efforts of international researchers and failed to share information on the source of the virus or best practices,” he said. “Their Communist Party is more interested in ‘saving face’ and stamping out internal dissent [than] in helping [to] prevent the spread of [this] dangerous disease.”
