Trump's Tariffs: A Reason Why Doctors Don't Have Protective Gear
Trump's trade policy is hampering the US fight against COVID-19, contributing to shortages and higher costs of vital medical supplies and equipment, writes Chad P. Bown at Peterson Econ:
In the last two years, Trump's policy has forced China to divert the sales of these products--including protective gear for doctors and nurses and high-tech equipment to monitor patients--from the United States to other markets, and now the US medical establishment faces looming trouble importing these necessities from other countries, which may be hoarding them to meet their own health crises.To deal with this issue, the Trump administration quietly announced on March 10 and 12, 2020, that it would temporarily reduce some tariffs imposed on Chinese products to treat the coronavirus pandemic. But those actions, which effectively acknowledged that trade wars can endanger public health, covered only a handful of urgently needed products.
Trump's tariffs had been slapped on nearly $5 billion of US imports of medical goods from China, about 26 percent of all medical goods imported from all countries.
...This calamity was hardly unforeseen. In August 2018, the Trump administration's US Trade Representative convened a hearing to ask the public whether it should impose tariffs on such products. Matt Rowan, president of the Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA), warned against the impact that Trump's tariffs would have on the American health sector. "These products are essential to protecting healthcare providers and their patients every single day," he said with shocking prescience. "The healthcare products on the proposed list are used widely throughout healthcare settings and are a critical component of our nation's response to public health emergencies."
...MEDICAL PRODUCTS NEEDED TO FIGHT COVID-19
Among the many products that industry experts have identified as important for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the most important include personal protective equipment, masks, sterile gloves, and goggles that doctors, nurses, and first responders wear to limit the spread of infectious disease.Also critical is disposable equipment such as hospital gowns, surgical drapes, as well as thermometers and breathing masks, which patients require during a hospital visit. Finally, relatively high-tech medical equipment--including CT systems, ultrasound systems, patient monitors, and X-ray devices--is used to diagnose and treat patients suffering from the disease.
Americans imported about $22 billion of such products from the world in 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19.
Before Trump began the trade war in 2018, US tariffs on imports of most of these products were fairly low. For half of the products imported, the US tariff was even zero. A handful faced nuisance tariffs of less than 4.5 percent, and disposable and other medical headwear had tariffs of 6 to 8 percent.
Overall, low US tariffs enabled American hospitals and patients to access a plentiful supply of these products at the highest quality and lowest price, including from China: Before the trade war, the United States imported $5 billion of these goods from China, or about 26 percent of US imports of such products at the time.
...In September 2019, Trump hit even more medical products from China with 15 percent tariffs. US imports of these products from the rest of the world also grew 23 percent between 2017 and 2019, while US import growth from China fell to only 13 percent. The smaller negative effect on these products in 2019 is likely due to the US tariffs being at a lower rate (15 percent, not 25 percent) and only being in effect for four months.
Overall, Trump's tariffs imposed hardship on American medical care purchasers and providers.
In many instances, Americans had no choice but to continue to buy from China, which meant paying an additional cost due to the tariff. Medical equipment cannot instantaneously sprout up at another plant in some other country. American patients demand the safety that comes through Food and Drug Administration (FDA) testing and certification. This process ensures manufacturing facilities do not roll out defective health care equipment.
As Lara Simmons of Medline Industries had explained to the administration in June 2019, "Finding alternative sources of supply for these products to minimize the cost impact of the duties is not a viable option in the near or medium term.... Starting production in the U.S. or any third country would be a time consuming and expensive process due to the FDA regulatory procedure that is required for these products." She alerted the administration to the timeline of the tariffs' impact on US health care preparedness: "This process can take more than two years."
Even for American consumers who tried to switch to non-Chinese suppliers, doing so would come at a cost. Companies and hospitals would need to shift resources to their procurement divisions to search for new manufactures. New products would need to be tested to ensure interoperability and that they met the same quality standards as the old ones that Trump's tariffs were forcing them to abandon. These financial resources instead could have been spent on patient care or cutting costs.
Finally, America's own manufacturers of hospital equipment also faced higher costs because of Trump's tariffs on other products--specifically, the many parts and components. Trump's 25 percent tariffs remain on over $100 billion of intermediate inputs from China.
Failing to heed the warnings, Trump's tariffs have disrupted the American health care system's access to medical products, just when they are needed the most in 2020.
Oh Kay.
This is looking like Bush Derangement Syndrome. Remember when he was a drooling idiot, yet a criminal mastermind responsible for every failure, be it personal, corporate, state or national?
Just want to be sure that you remember that having the antibiotics industry dependent on China was and is a bad thing, and in the absence of COVID-19, efforts to change dependencies on China are a good thing.
So, now it's Trump's fault he couldn't:
a) fix the policies started by Clinton more quickly, and get manufacturing back to the USA
b) go back in time and get previous Administrations to do that
c) see the future arrival of COVID-19.
There you go.
The virus will still kill fewer people than American Socialism will.
Radwaste at March 18, 2020 5:06 AM
Radwaste,
The Trump administration is responsible for not using COVID-19 diagnostic tests produced by the World Health Organization in favor of producing its own during a period when early testing would have greatly reduced the rate of spread.
Trump is also responsible for disbanding the white house pandemic response team years ago when that is the team of experts that would have been best positioned to advise and respond to this issue.
These were executive decisions for which he is responsible.
It isn't about "seeing the future arrival of COVID-19"... it is about properly managing resources and planning ahead.
That is the primary job of the executive. The above items are his failure to own.
Artemis at March 18, 2020 5:46 AM
Oh for Pete's sake Artemis - get the facts straight!
The tests offered by WHO did not pass basic standards - those tests would have resulted in too many false positives. Something like 48 percent false positives! Such a large failure rate would have wasted precious resources.
As for Trump "disbanding" a team; um, no he did NOT. He reorganized them into other teams. THAT is something that a leader does, find a more effective way to organize.
Those experts who were "disbanded" are still there; just part of a different team; what Trump thought would be a more efficient, more effective team.
This is one of the problems with "false news" - the real facts are lost.
charles at March 18, 2020 5:58 AM
Emphasis mine:
https://archive.is/9LJ9O
I R A Darth Aggie at March 18, 2020 6:18 AM
If you want real complaints about Trump here are a few.
1. He did not motivate the FDA and CDC to fast track approval for accurate COVID-19 tests.
2. He did not think to permit testing of old flu samples the CDC already had for COVID-19, hence underreporting the spread.
3. He hasn't managed to keep panic under control.
Unfortunately for the critics most of those failings are in line with past presidents. Moving the bureaucracy is quite difficult.
Ben at March 18, 2020 7:24 AM
I've tried to drill down on the issue of what happened to the White House pandemic response team. Not surprisingly, it's complicated and unclear. As I understand it, after criticism about how Ebola was handled in 2014 and 2015, Obama had the NSC set up a rapid response unit with direct ties to the White House in 2016. Trump put John Bolton in charge of the NSC and Bolton did not disband this unit but he did consolidate it with some other units he thought had related duties. Some personnel left. The unit is still there, minus a Director, and has been dealing with Covid. People who have insider knowledge say that the streamlined unit didn't respond as well as the original organization would have been able to. Other people with insider knowledge say that the unit functions as intended and the reason that response wasn't as quick or crisp as it could be is because China concealed what was going on for so many weeks. Ultimately it's speculation as to what hypothetical actions would have been taken differently if the unit was still organized as it was in 2016. How can the average person evaluate this question?
RigelDog at March 18, 2020 7:38 AM
Other people with insider knowledge say that the unit functions as intended and the reason that response wasn't as quick or crisp as it could be is because China concealed what was going on for so many weeks. Ultimately it's speculation as to what hypothetical actions would have been taken differently if the unit was still organized as it was in 2016. How can the average person evaluate this question?
RigelDog at March 18, 2020 7:38 AM
Remember that a White House task Force can’t really do anything about Ebola or the Corona virus. All they can be is another layer of briefings to people who have the power to take *some* actions that might impact public health.
Once wonders if the CDC was actually doing the job they were tasked with, as opposed to all sorts of studies that have nothing to do with infectious disease, would a White House task force even be necessary? Seems like just a duplication of a largely administrative function. All of it muddled up by mission creep,
Isab at March 18, 2020 8:09 AM
Adding to the problem is that "as well as the original organization would have been able to" is mostly speculative to begin with. We don't know with certainty how well the original configuration would have been able to respond to something like this.
I've read arguments that the CDC's focus on non-disease health-adjacent matters has negatively affected its ability to respond to infectious diseases, its original mandate.
Not sure if that's the case, but there has been a fair amount of politicization of what should be non-partisan agencies in the past few decades.
Bureaucracies set up for a specific purpose tend to experience scope creep when that specific purpose is not at the forefront of the popular experience.
Conan the Grammarian at March 18, 2020 8:17 AM
Don't forget the #Resistance.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 18, 2020 8:34 AM
The mask thing is total bullshit. If a group of us got together to determine how we should react to a pandemic, in the first 10 minutes we would agree that we needed to stockpile billions of surgical masks and gloves or, better yet, have the ability to make them.
But no western country did. Not the CDC under Obama or Trump. Not the EU or any country with wonderful socialized medicine. The "experts" everywhere were absolutely incompetent.
Curtis at March 18, 2020 9:31 AM
Charles,
My facts are straight... you really need to start living in reality.
"The tests offered by WHO did not pass basic standards - those tests would have resulted in too many false positives. Something like 48 percent false positives! Such a large failure rate would have wasted precious resources."
This is nonsense. I honestly have no idea where you are getting this false information from.
The problem was never the WHO tests... it was the tests developed here by the CDC:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us
"The void created by the C.D.C.’s faulty tests made it impossible for public-health authorities to get an accurate picture of how far and how fast the disease was spreading."
In other words, while you are busy saying the tests from the WHO were faulty, it was actually the tests that were rushed through domestically that had massive issues.
"Those experts who were "disbanded" are still there; just part of a different team; what Trump thought would be a more efficient, more effective team."
That isn't an accurate representation either.
Just because the people still exist doesn't mean they weren't repurposed for a different set of tasks.
No one is suggesting Trump executed all of the people associated with the pandemic team. Repurposing them for other tasks *is* the problem.
If I am managing a team of people and decide to reprioritize the tasks they are assigned to, it is my responsibility if someone goes sideways on one of the tasks I deprioritized.
That is what it means to be a manager. You own the priorities and assignments. Your direct reports own what has been assigned to them.
"This is one of the problems with "false news" - the real facts are lost."
You've got that right. What you are missing is that you aren't actually paying attention to real facts.
Artemis at March 18, 2020 9:54 AM
It also wasn't my imagination when Trump called the Corona virus a democrat hoax that would be gone by the time it got warm.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-he-took-coronavirus-seriously-after-calling-it-a-hoax-2020-3
The cognitive dissonance here is really thick.
Let's recap shall we:
“We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
— Jan. 21, 2020
“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
— Feb. 2
“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
— Feb. 10
“When you have 15 [cases in the United States], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
— Feb. 26
Now Trump and the folks here may not be all that good at math... but we presently have ~6000 confirmed cases. I don't know if you are aware, but 6000 is not "close to zero".
This guy is a bullshit artist who doesn't have the slightest clue what he is doing.
At what point are you going to realize the emperor has no clothes? This is just getting embarrassing for you guys.
Artemis at March 18, 2020 10:09 AM
At what point are you going to realize the emperor has no clothes? This is just getting embarrassing for you guys.
Artemis at March 18, 2020 10:09 AM
Is this what you are going with for November? I’m not sure it is going to be enough to drag a senile born again socialist like Joe Biden over the finish line.
Isab at March 18, 2020 10:47 AM
Fun string of tweets from the NYT:
…With links and articles and charts and graphs. But they skipped my personal favorite example of his executive leadership—Voting for Trump is forgivable as a sincere if not thoughtful protest of the direction of American political culture.Personal admiration of him as so often expressed on this blog is abject. Blind devotion of that magnitude, for ANY human being and certainly for Trump, when expressed with such immovable fidelity, is not the work of a developed mind.
We see that his fanboys will allow no limit of death, suffering, or impoverishment interfere with their love of the man, and will will fault the sanity of his critics as society collapses in his office. This isn't even respectable nihilism; it's a thirteen-year-old boy spotting his panties for the first time.
Crid at March 18, 2020 12:29 PM
Yang swings the hammer.
Crid at March 18, 2020 12:35 PM
Trump, the administration, the CDC and the NIH did not turn down coronavirus test kits offered by the WHO. The WHO never offered any. The US can manufacture and use the same type of test the WHO uses, or it can develop its own. The US chose the latter.
During epidemics the WHO doesn't offer or sell test kits to the US, nor to any other highly developed countries with the research capability and resources to develop their own tests. The US and other developed countries wouldn't ask for them, because buying them would create shortages for less developed countries that don't have the capability to develop and manufacture their own.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/biden-falsely-says-trump-administration-rejected-w/
Ken R at March 18, 2020 2:54 PM
Trump didn't call the coronavirus outbreak a hoax. Trump called the Democrats' politicizing of the coronavirus outbreak "their new hoax". The Washington Post gave Biden's campaign ad about this four pinocchios.
https://checkyourfact.com/2020/02/29/fact-check-donald-trump-coronavirus-hoax-south-carolina-rally/?fbclid=IwAR32a17U4u3E7vxzoutYAw879D4nxQEHwlvzQlrs5fFiVBe90oPwZ4lOPKg
Ken R at March 18, 2020 3:00 PM
Trump didn't cut funding to the CDC's global anti-pandemic work. He has asked Congress to increase funding for this, and it has been increased.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/
Ken R at March 18, 2020 3:13 PM
This is the perfect storm for Dem disinformation - there is no way to predict, no perfect way to react - and so Trump can be blamed whether he does too much or does too little, shows too much concern or too little.
Same thing is happening here in Israel. First Bibi was accused of ignoring a humanitarian crisis to focus on politics - now he's being accused of using the pandemic to distract from political problems. First he was accused of being too complacent - now he is criticised for fear-mongering and "destroying democracy" by using cell-phone data to trace people exposed to the virus.
Christmas came early for the Lefties cranking out fake news.
I suggest that Artemis et al check out some of the fine articles comparing Trump's timely action with Obama's underwhelming response to the N1H1 virus. But there was no panicked over-the-top reporting because Obama was a Dem who had to be protected.
Ben David at March 18, 2020 3:32 PM
Perhaps the real problem is that Trump's tariffs weren't high enough to make it worthwhile to set up mask production in the US.
markm at March 18, 2020 3:47 PM
Sure, in a capitalist world mask production lowers manufacturing costs, but in a socialist world the workers own the means of mask production and enjoy the fruits of their neighbors.
I learned that on the internet.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 18, 2020 4:09 PM
Trump did not cut funding for the CDC. The CDC's budget hasn't been decreased.
HHS officials would like for the CDC to focus more on its original mission of prevention and control of infectious diseases and other urgent public health issues like opioid abuse; and spend less effort on things like diabetes, heart disease, "gun disease", or bathroom breaks for taxi drivers. It would be good to see the CDC spend a lot less money on things like agriculture, forestry and fishery; gay activism in public schools; contraception; a manual on how to throw a party with alcohol; transgender beauty pageants; classes on flirting; a study to find out how prostitutes spread STD's; employee fitness facilities with quiet rooms, anti-gravity chairs and mood enhancing light shows; erotic writing classes; zoo trips for people with HIV; HIV/AIDS programs with no defined objectives or goals (HIV is still pandemic and millions of dollars designated for research, treatment and prevention get wasted on programs that seemed to be designed more for spending the money than for preventing the disease)
When Congress throws more money at an agency than it needs to fund its mission, what do you think they're going to do with it? Give it back? They're going to expand their mission; they're going to spend it, frantically, before the end of the fiscal year, on anything they can think of, and ask for more next year. When the CDC asks for $2.5 Billion to fund its role in dealing with and epidemic, and Congress gives it $8 Billion, what do you think they're going to do with an extra $5+Billion?
Trump has suggested reducing CDC's 2021 budget for activities not related to infectious disease control and using some of the money to enhance activities that are related to controlling infectious diseases, and for grants to the states for public health activities.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-cdc-budget/
Ken R at March 18, 2020 4:27 PM
Coronavirus and NIH/CDC Funding:
https://www.cato.org/blog/coronavirus-nih/cdc-funding
About 90% of the criticism against Trump's response to the COVID-19 epidemic has more to do with the next election than it does with the handling of the epidemic. There are a lot of politicians and their supporters who are hoping for a public health catastrophe and economic collapse. They would rather see the United States suffer a catastrophe than see Trump succeed. Most of the misinformed criticism is not a mistake or misunderstanding. It's outright lying.
Ken R at March 18, 2020 4:36 PM
As much as I hate Trump, you can't just blame him for this, the shortages of medical equipment are everywhere, not just in the US.
NicoleK at March 19, 2020 12:02 AM
Even though I thought Obama was pathetic, corrupt, and inept, I didn’t waste my time hating him. Never let politicians get into your head. They simply aren’t worth it.
Isab at March 19, 2020 4:41 AM
Isab Says:
"Is this what you are going with for November? I’m not sure it is going to be enough to drag a senile born again socialist like Joe Biden over the finish line."
It is amazing that your entire focus right now is on November as we are presently dealing with serious health and economic problems as we speak and the guy at the reins had told us repeatedly that there is nothing to see and that the problem will just miraculously go away.
That isn't leadership or competence.
The fact that Biden is a dope doesn't change the reality that Trump is a clown.
If you are content with a clown you are in no position to be critical of a dope.
Assuming that there is a debate between Trump and Biden it is most assuredly going to be the most mind numbing garbled stupidity to ever make it onto the air waves.
In other words, you should record it so that you can watch it several times for comprehension.
I especially love how you refer to Biden as senile as if Trump is all there... have you read his tweets or watched him speak?... the guy is a complete and utter mess who doesn't appear to know anything.
They should just call this election dumb and dumber 2020.
Artemis at March 19, 2020 9:00 AM
“The fact that Biden is a dope doesn't change the reality that Trump is a clown.
If you are content with a clown you are in no position to be critical of a dope.”
Actually I am, because it is the entire Democratic Party slate of policy positions I’m voting against. I don’t care who the figurehead is.
Face it Artemis, Trump is living in your head, rent free, and you have another four years and nine months of this. Maybe more.
Isab at March 19, 2020 9:24 AM
Isab Says:
"Face it Artemis, Trump is living in your head, rent free, and you have another four years and nine months of this. Maybe more."
Not really Isab... the guy is a joke and I don't waste my time thinking about him outside of the fact that he is currently the president. Once the reality show clown is gone he will be forgotten.
On the other hand, you and people like you continue bitch and moan about Obama and Clinton years after they have become completely irrelevant to your lives.
The only one with folks living rent free in their head would be you.
Go ahead and prove me wrong though... please give it your best shot to refrain from mentioning Obama and/or Clinton considering they are off in the woods.
The very same way I never feel the need to discuss Bush, once Trump is out of office he will be relegated back into obscurity and nothing more than evidence of how few principles folks like you ever really had.
Artemis at March 19, 2020 6:06 PM
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