Covid-19, US elections, Trump and a global tragedy

Power before people: Trump visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier this month, wearing a mask for the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak. Wearing a mask in the US has been described as a political issue, not a medical necessity. — AP

IN his 2016 Inaugural Address, United States President Donald Trump said: “For too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealised potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

To stop the carnage, Trump cut taxes and started the trade war with China.

With just over four months to the November 2020 elections, the trade war has escalated to a fever pitch, thus described by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi: “It seems as if every Chinese investment is politically driven, every Chinese student is a spy and every cooperation initiative is a scheme with a hidden agenda.”