U.S. President Donald Trump stands as Vice President Mike Pence speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on April 20, 2020. The White House is planning to shift President Donald Trump’s public focus to the burgeoning efforts aimed at easing the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.
The Associated Press
After two months of frantic response to the coronavirus, the White House is planning to shift U.S. President Donald Trump’s public focus to the burgeoning efforts aimed at easing the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.
Days after he publicly mused that scientists should explore the injection of toxic disinfectants as a potential virus cure, Mr. Trump has now rejected the utility of his daily task force briefings, where he has time and again clashed with scientific experts. Mr. Trump’s aides are aiming to move the President onto more familiar – and safer, they hope – ground: talking up the economy, in tighter controlled settings.
It’s a political imperative as allies have seen an erosion in support for the President. What had been his greatest asset in the re-election campaign, his ability to blanket news headlines with freewheeling performances, has become a daily liability. At the same time, new Republican Party polling shows Mr. Trump’s path to a second term depends on the public’s perception of how quickly the economic rebounds from the state-by-state shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the virus.
Some states have started to ease shutdown orders, and Mr. Trump is expected to begin to highlight his administration’s work in helping businesses and employees. Aides said the President would hold more frequent round-tables with CEOs, business owners and beneficiaries of the trillions of dollars in federal aid already approved by Congress, and begin to outline what he hopes to see in a future recovery package.
Mr. Trump last left the White House grounds a month ago, and plans are being drawn up for a limited schedule of travel within the next few weeks, an aide said. It would be a symbolic show that the country is beginning to reopen.
The shift comes in conjunction with what the White House sees as encouraging signs across the country, with the pace of new infections stabilizing and deaths declining.
Still, medical experts warn that the virus will remain until at least a vaccine is developed and that the risk of a severe second wave is high if social distancing is relaxed too quickly or if testing and contact tracing schemes aren’t developed before people return to normal behaviours.
The White House is deliberating whether to continue to hold news briefings in a modified form without Mr. Trump, potentially at a different location. Before Mr. Trump said in a tweet Saturday that they were “Not worth the time & effort,” aides had been eager to use the briefings to highlight positive trends and to overwhelm Americans with statistics. It was an effort to restore confidence in the response so that the public would be comfortable resuming more normal activities.
“We know that’s important,” Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force co-ordinator, told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “We understand those messages of science and policy need to be brought forward to the American people in a non-political way.”
Few Americans regularly look to or trust Mr. Trump as a source of information on the pandemic, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last week.
On Monday, the White House is expected to release a recap of what the federal government has done so far to improve the availability of COVID-19 testing, personal protective equipment and ventilators.
Still, governors in both parties say much more is needed, particularly in testing, in the coming months, as they deliberate how and when to reopen their states.
“I want to get our economy back opened just as soon as we can, but I want to do so in a safe way so we don’t have a spike, we don’t cause more deaths, or an overloading of our health care system,” Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican from Mayland, told ABC’s This Week.
Dr. Birx expressed frustration that Mr. Trump’s injection comments were still in the headlines, illustrating the tensions that have emerged between the President and his medical advisers.
“As a scientist and a public health official and a researcher, sometimes I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need, when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union.
As the White House aims to turn a corner, it is also beginning to assess responsibility for critical missteps. Two senior administration officials said Mr. Trump has begun discussions about replacing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who led the coronavirus task force during its initial weeks and has been blamed for a culture of bureaucratic infighting during that period. Mr. Azar has been largely sidelined since Vice-President Mike Pence took charge of the task force in late February.
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(Bloomberg) — The head of the International Monetary Fund warned the US that the global economy is closely watching interest rates and industrial policies given the potential spillovers from the world’s biggest economy and reserve currency.
“All eyes are on the US,” Kristalina Georgieva said in an interview on Bloomberg’s Surveillance on Thursday.
The two biggest issues, she said, are “what is going to happen with inflation and interest rates” and “how is the US going to navigate this world of more intrusive government policies.”
The sustained strength of the US dollar is “concerning” for other currencies, particularly the lack of clarity on how long that may last.
“That’s what I hear from countries,” said the leader of the fund, which has about 190 members. “How long will the Fed be stuck with higher interest rates?”
Georgieva was speaking on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, where policymakers have been debating the impacts of Washington and Beijing’s policies and their geopolitical rivalry.
Read More: A Resilient Global Economy Masks Growing Debt and Inequality
Georgieva said the IMF is optimistic that the conditions will be right for the Federal Reserve to start cutting rates this year.
“The Fed is not yet prepared, and rightly so, to cut,” she said. “How fast? I don’t think we should gear up for a rapid decline in interest rates.”
The IMF chief also repeated her concerns about China devoting too much capital and labor toward export-oriented manufacturing, causing other countries, including the US, to retaliate with protectionist policies.
China Overcapacity
“If China builds overcapacity and pushes exports that create reciprocity of action, then we are in a world of more fragmentation not less, and that ultimately is not good for China,” Georgieva said.
“What I want to see China doing is get serious about reforms, get serious about demand and consumption,” she added.
A number of countries have recently criticized China for what they see as excessive state subsidies for manufacturers, particularly in clean energy sectors, that might flood global markets with cheap goods and threaten competing firms.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hammered at the theme during a recent trip to China, repeatedly calling on Beijing to shift its economic policy toward stimulating domestic demand.
Chinese officials have acknowledged the risk of overcapacity in some areas, but have largely portrayed the criticism as overblown and hypocritical, coming from countries that are also ramping up clean energy subsidies.
(Updates with additional Georgieva comments from eighth paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned the US that the global economy is closely watching interest rates and industrial policies given the potential spillovers from the world’s biggest economy and reserve currency.
Author of the article:
Published Apr 18, 2024 • 2 minute read
(Bloomberg) — The head of the International Monetary Fund warned the US that the global economy is closely watching interest rates and industrial policies given the potential spillovers from the world’s biggest economy and reserve currency.
“All eyes are on the US,” Kristalina Georgieva said in an interview on Bloomberg’s Surveillance on Thursday.
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The two biggest issues, she said, are “what is going to happen with inflation and interest rates” and “how is the US going to navigate this world of more intrusive government policies.”
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Article content
The sustained strength of the US dollar is “concerning” for other currencies, particularly the lack of clarity on how long that may last.
“That’s what I hear from countries,” said the leader of the fund, which has about 190 members. “How long will the Fed be stuck with higher interest rates?”
Georgieva was speaking on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, where policymakers have been debating the impacts of Washington and Beijing’s policies and their geopolitical rivalry.
Read More: A Resilient Global Economy Masks Growing Debt and Inequality
Georgieva said the IMF is optimistic that the conditions will be right for the Federal Reserve to start cutting rates this year.
“The Fed is not yet prepared, and rightly so, to cut,” she said. “How fast? I don’t think we should gear up for a rapid decline in interest rates.”
The IMF chief also repeated her concerns about China devoting too much capital and labor toward export-oriented manufacturing, causing other countries, including the US, to retaliate with protectionist policies.
China Overcapacity
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Article content
“If China builds overcapacity and pushes exports that create reciprocity of action, then we are in a world of more fragmentation not less, and that ultimately is not good for China,” Georgieva said.
“What I want to see China doing is get serious about reforms, get serious about demand and consumption,” she added.
A number of countries have recently criticized China for what they see as excessive state subsidies for manufacturers, particularly in clean energy sectors, that might flood global markets with cheap goods and threaten competing firms.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hammered at the theme during a recent trip to China, repeatedly calling on Beijing to shift its economic policy toward stimulating domestic demand.
Chinese officials have acknowledged the risk of overcapacity in some areas, but have largely portrayed the criticism as overblown and hypocritical, coming from countries that are also ramping up clean energy subsidies.
(Updates with additional Georgieva comments from eighth paragraph.)
Article content
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