A pandemic stole our booming economy. In pursuit of justice, we have nailed the culpable C.C.Party for exporting and exploiting a virus from Wuhan. We are aware that Beijing has an out-clause in its $200 billion trade agreement with Washington, which allows the buyer to break the deal due to force majeure.(1) Well, that trade agreement makes no provision for Beijing to claim the virus outbreak it has covered up as force majeure. We always expect the unexpected from Beijing, don’t we?

On the home front we are taking steps to re-open. That is a silver lining. Still, a dark cloud is hanging over us. Consider the following fact: less than 3% of U.S. counties account for half of our GDP and 61% of Coronavirus cases at this point in time.(2) So on the one hand, without urban centers taking the lead, the rest of our country will be going nowhere. But on the other hand, urban centers will be way behind rural areas in the process of re-opening. Call it a Catch-22 situation.

From where we stand, a V-shaped recovery is out of sight, though not out of mind.(3) In all likelihood, we are going to bounce around at the bottom for a long while before crawling back up in a U-shaped recovery. For the record, the 2008 recession took a decade to heal after hemorrhaging 15 million jobs.(4) This time around, more than 26 million jobs have been wiped out in just five weeks.(5) Worse still, we can’t bring ourselves to count all the lives and livelihoods lost so far. 

Preparing for the worst, let’s look for enlightenment from past experiences. History has a flowery name: Forget-me-not. 

The “malaise” of the 1970s was an unfriendly reminder urging America to reinvent itself. In the early 1980s President Reagan answered the call. He cut tax for—instead of bailing out—capitalists who, in turn, wisely invested in cutting-edge technologies on American soil. Microchip, for example, was a runaway success. America never gives up.

The pandemic of 2020 is another unfriendly reminder urging America to reinvent itself. The phone in the Oval Office is ringing, and so are the iPhones in our hands. Let’s compete with each other for the best answer.

——Lingyang Jiang 

Footnotes: 

(1) “force majeure” refers to “unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.”

Congressional Research Service,”COVID-19: U.S.-China Economic Considerations”, March 2, 2020: “The deal was finalized in December 2019, when Chinese officials reportedly knew about the outbreak, which raises questions about the rationale and timing of the decision to include the force majeure provision.”

(2) Danielle DiMartino Booth, “The Reality of Density”, Quill Intelligence, April 24, 2020

(3) Six months after the 1929 market crash, President Hoover said, “…I am convinced we have now passed the worst, and with continued unity of effort, we shall rapidly recover.” (May 1, 1930) Little did he know that the Great Depression was taking hold of America.

(4) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ”Great Recession, great recovery? Trends from the Current Population Survey”, April 2018

(5) National Public Radio, “Coronavirus Live Updates”, April 23, 2020