Trade is way down on the list of priorities in a public health crisis, but it is still important to make sure that policies don’t actually make the situation worse. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, a number of governments are, unfortunately, doing just that. Many countries, for example, are shortsightedly enacting export bans on critical medical supplies and worsening shortages in places that may have the greatest need, like Italy. In the United States, President Donald Trump’s trade policies seem to be on autopilot, with tariffs continuing more or less as before, even though those tariffs are complicating [...]
Tensions have simmered for decades between Brazil, which believes the Amazon rainforest is a sovereign resource, and wealthy developed countries concerned with protecting one of the world’s most important carbon sinks. But it wasn’t until last summer that, amid growing international concern over climate change, deforestation in the Amazon provoked a high-level diplomatic spat. As fires raged in the Amazon, most of them set by farmers and ranchers to clear land, French President Emmanuel Macron proclaimed the issue was an international crisis and said he would put it on the agenda of the G-7 summit in Biarritz. German Chancellor Angela [...]
There is no drug or vaccine against COVID-19, and it will be at least 12 to 18 months before those remedies could be available. Face masks are next to impossible to find for most consumers, even as public health officials caution that they are not terribly effective against this coronavirus. There is a shortage of ventilators, and President Donald Trump has told America’s governors that they should not rely on the federal government to provide them—even though they are the most effective tool for treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In addition to the political, economic and social impacts of the coronavirus [...]
