A new front for nationalism

As they battle a pandemic that has no regard for borders, the leaders of many of the world’s largest economies are in the thrall of unabashedly nationalist principles, undermining collective efforts to tame the novel coronavirus.

The US, an unrivalled scientific power, is led by a president who openly scoffs at international cooperation while pursuing a global trade war. China, a dominant source of protective gear and medicines, is bent on a mission to restore its former imperial glory.

Now, just as the world requires collaboration to defeat the coronavirus — scientists joining forces across borders to create vaccines, and manufacturers coordinating to deliver critical supplies — national interests are winning out. This time, the contest is over far more than which countries will make iPads or even advanced jets. This is a battle for supremacy over products that may determine who lives and who dies.

At least 69 countries have banned or restricted the export of protective equipment, medical devices or medicines, according to the Global Trade Alert project at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. The World Health Organization is warning protectionism could limit the global availability of vaccines. With every country on the planet in need of the same lifesaving tools at once, national rivalries are jeopardising access for all.

“The parties with the deepest pockets will secure these vaccines and medicines, and essentially, much of the developing world will be entirely out of the picture,” said Simon J Evenett, an expert on international trade who started the University of St. Gallen project.

“We will have rationing by price. It will be brutal.” Some point to the tragedy playing out around the world as an argument for greater self sufficiency, so that hospitals are less reliant on China and India for medicines and protective gear.

China alone makes the vast majority of the core chemicals used to make raw materials for a range of generic medicines used to treat people now hospitalized with COVID-19, said Rosemary Gibson, a health care expert at the Hastings Center, an independent research institution in New York. These include antibiotics, blood pressure treatments and sedatives.

“Everyone is competing for a supply located in a single country,” Gibson said. But if the laudable goal of diversification inspires every nation to look inward and dismantle global production, that will leave the world even more vulnerable, said Chad P Bown, an international trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. President Trump and his leading trade adviser, Peter Navarro, have exploited the pandemic as an opportunity to redouble efforts to force MNCs to abandon China and shift production to the US. Navarro has proposed rules that would force American health care providers to buy protective gear and medicines from US suppliers.

“We just don’t have the production capacity,” Bown said, noting that Chinese industry is restarting, while American factories remain disrupted. “Just as you don’t want to be too dependent on China, you don’t want to be too dependent on yourself. You have now walled yourself off from the only way you can potentially deal with this, in your time of greatest need, which is relying on the rest of the world.” For seven decades after World War II, the notion that global trade enhances security and prosperity prevailed across major economies.

When people exchange goods across borders, the logic goes, they become less likely to take up arms. Consumers gain better and cheaper products. Competition and collaboration spur innovation.

But in many countries — especially the US — a stark failure by governments to equitably distribute the bounty has undermined faith in trade, giving way to a protectionist mentality in which goods and resources are viewed as zero-sum. Now, the zero-sum perspective is a guiding force just as the sum in question is alarmingly limited: Potentially vital supplies of medicine are in short supply, exacerbating antagonism and distrust.

Last week, the Trump administration cited a Korean War-era law to justify banning exports of protective masks made in the US, while ordering American companies that produce such wares overseas to redirect orders to their home market. One American company, 3M, said halting planned shipments of masks overseas would imperil health workers in Canada and Latin America. On Monday, 3M said it struck a compromise with the government that will send some masks to the US and some overseas.

In recent weeks, Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa and Ecuador have all banned the export of protective masks. France and Germany imposed bans on masks and other protective gear, lifting them only after the European Union barred exports outside the bloc. India banned exports of respirators and disinfectants. Britain prohibited exports of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug being tested for benefits against the virus. Hungary has banned exports of the raw material for that drug and medicines that contain it.

“The export bans are not helpful,” said Mariangela Simao, assistant director general for medicines and health products at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It can disrupt supply chains of some products that are actually needed everywhere.” President Trump has been especially aggressive in securing an American stockpile of hydroxychloroquine, disregarding the counsel of federal scientists who have warned that testing remains minimal, with scant evidence of benefits.

India is the world’s largest producer of hydroxychloroquine. Last month, the government banned exports of the drug, though it stipulated that shipments could continue under limited circumstances. “In this situation, each country has to take care of itself,” said Satish Kumar, an adjunct professor at the International Institute of Health Management Research in New Delhi.

“If we are not able to take care of our population, it will be a very critical situation.” After Trump demanded that India lift the export restrictions on Monday night while threatening retaliation, the government appeared to soften its position. Arithmetic suggested a policy of stockpiling for national needs might leave other countries short. India is likely to require 56 metric tons, but now has only 38 metric tons, said Udaya Bhaskar, director general of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India.