The biggest cost of the U.S.-China trade war is the lack of cooperation against Covid-19.
Critics of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China stress that it has led to higher consumer prices, costly bailouts for American farmers and mutual hard feelings. All these points are right as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. The biggest cost of the trade war — measured in lives lost, lingering business uncertainty and a longer economic downturn — is the lack of cooperation between the U.S. and China on vaccines and other biomedical advances. Consider the U.S. position. Since it’s impossible to know which vaccines for Covid-19 will be safest and most effective until the clinical trials are further along and other studies have been made, the federal government has made advance purchases of seven vaccines. By pre-purchasing a portfolio of vaccines, the U.S. can ensure that when the time comes to ramp up production, the companies will be ready. The current portfolio is multinational, including investments in Pfizer, Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Ideally, there should be at least one Chinese vaccine included, but there is not. Obviously, given the rhetoric of the current administration, using a Chinese vaccine would be politically difficult. You can’t call it “the Chinese virus” and then tell Americans they ought to take a Chinese vaccine. So the Trump administration has made no serious effort to make a vaccine-sharing deal with China.
