Covid-19 Threatens Global Safety Net

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/covid-who-imf.html

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Having rampaged through the wealthier Northern Hemisphere, the coronavirus is expected to strike next in the poorer South, where many countries are far less equipped to cope with the medical and economic ravages. Fortunately, there are international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization to help with just such a contingency. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is hampering the work of these critically needed agencies.

President Trump took aim first at the W.H.O. last week, suspending funding for the organization pending a review of its handling of the outbreak, which he deemed too slow and too reverential toward China. Next, the White House turned to the I.M.F., blocking a new issue of its “special drawing rights,” an international reserve asset created by the fund in 1969 to supplement member countries’ official reserves.

There is some understandable anger at international institutions. The W.H.O. was slow off the mark, and its public statements praising China’s measures against the virus made no reference to Beijing’s initial silence and continuing disinformation campaign about the outbreak. The special drawing rights, for their part, are allocated in proportion to voting rights in the I.M.F., so the greatest benefit would be for stronger economies that need it less.

But these are arguments best left for normal times. They certainly have no place when instruments of immediate economic and medical aid, created for just the sort of crisis the world is suffering today, are most desperately needed. At the outset Mr. Trump had nothing but praise for the W.H.O.’s and China’s handling of the pandemic — the W.H.O., he said initially, was “working very hard and very smart,” and as late as March 27, he tweeted fulsome praise for China: “China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the virus.” The I.M.F., it seems, was not yet on his radar.

What changed? Mostly growing criticism of Mr. Trump, and grumbling in conservative circles that China was gaining ground in the coronavirus propaganda sweepstakes. The W.H.O. was a natural scapegoat for the failings of the federal government, even though by most metrics it was far ahead of the administration in taking action.

The president first raised the idea of cutting payments to the W.H.O. two weeks ago, then backed down, acknowledging that a global pandemic was “maybe not” the time to freeze funding for the organization coordinating international health work. Then last week he decided it was just the time, telling a White House briefing that “the reality is that the W.H.O. failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.”

What the suspension actually means remains unclear, even in the White House, like so many other pronouncements by Mr. Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has argued that the president can’t block money allocated by Congress, and in any case the United States is apparently not required to make its next payment until after the review period of 60 to 90 days. What the White House could suspend are voluntary contributions, some of which are for programs, like polio eradication, supported by the United States Agency for International Development.

For all its shortcomings, the W.H.O. identified the new illness then spreading in Wuhan as a result of the novel coronavirus on Jan. 9; it provided a fairly accurate description by Jan. 23; and on Jan. 30 it declared “a public health emergency of international concern.” All the while it was sharing critical information with American officials at W.H.O. headquarters in Geneva. Nevertheless, in late February, Mr. Trump was still saying infections in the United States would soon go “close to zero.”

The I.M.F. and its special drawing rights are a somewhat different story, with the same result. With the realization growing that emerging and developing countries are facing crises far in excess of what rich countries have endured, the managing director of the fund, Kristalina Georgieva, told the fund’s annual meeting, held virtually, that the world had never seen such a growing demand for emergency funding, which for poorer countries would amount to trillions of dollars. The most effective way to get the funding out pronto was a new issue of the S.D.R.s, she suggested, an idea that quickly found support from a broad range of finance ministers, economists and nonprofit organizations.

Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary, and Gordon Brown, a former British chancellor of the Exchequer, argued in The Washington Post that “if ever there was a moment for an expansion of the international money known as Special Drawing Rights, it is now.” Writing in The Financial Times, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany joined President Emmanuel Macron of France and major African leaders to urge the I.M.F. to decide quickly on S.D.R.s to “provide additional liquidity for the procurement of basic commodities and essential medical supplies.”

No, said the White House. It would be better for advanced countries to contribute to other I.M.F. programs, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The administration may really believe that, though Mr. Mnuchin offered no indication on the size or timing of an American contribution elsewhere. But there’s also the possibility that the White House does not want to see I.M.F. resources go to countries it sees as adversaries, such as Iran or Venezuela or even China, even if that causes untold damage elsewhere.

It is natural that an unexpected pandemic would send governments first to look after their own. But the fact is that this is a global crisis, which will require a global response. One country may succeed in tamping down infections, but so long as the virus is raging elsewhere it threatens to come back, again and again, as it is doing already in China.

More important, it is a mark of national and global leadership to resist the impulse to push the rest of the world away in a time like this. There should be no need to explain why the United States — the dominant and richest member of the W.H.O. and the I.M.F. and a nation to which the world looks up in times of upheaval — should take the lead in assisting countries the world over.

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