Politics is not what is on people’s minds right now.
And that is understandable. Indeed, it is something of a relief.
But politics will come back.
The nation is obliged to elect a president and a Congress in November.
And when it does, what political lessons will American voters draw from the corona pandemic and crisis?
One obvious lesson is that the federal government did not prepare for this war.
As with terrorism, the war came to us first.
We are still prepared for conventional war and we have been dealing with the terrorist threat since 2001. But we were not prepared for a pandemic.
So this has been a wake-up call, and we need to heed it.
It is clear that the nation must invest more, but also wisely and not just in reactive fashion, in public health and in scientific research.
But a second lesson is that a globalist approach to manufacturing and manufactured goods is now thoroughly discredited.
“Free trade,” and the failure to protect American manufacturers and workers, decimated the American heartland for a generation. Yet both political parties embraced free trade and a globalized economy, both ideologically and practically.
Donald Trump in his party and Bernie Sanders in his have now turned that orthodoxy on its head. They have made it politically acceptable, if not astute, to seek to protect American jobs and workers again.
It is strange, indeed perverse, that this natural civic impulse — to protect our economy and our neighbors — had become passé, naive, laughable.
But that has now changed. Protectionism and economic nationalism, at least in some basic, essential form, are no longer dirty words and concepts. And not many in Congress (Pat Toomey is an exception and so is Rand Paul) object to the notion of putting American workers ahead of global markets and raw market logic.
Mr. Sanders won the argument though he lost the Democratic nomination. And Mr. Trump changed the conversation, and possibly leaves a new established wisdom on trade as his legacy, whether he is re-elected or not.
The point that has yet to be driven home and absorbed is that protectionism has a cost: You will have to pay a little more for a suit, a car, or a protective mask, made by your neighbor.
Meanwhile, corona has shown us how truly ludicrous and dangerous globalism really has been and still is when it is absolute, unrestrained and unmanaged.
Corona has revealed that we not only sold out the American worker with free trade, but we compromised his health and that of his family.
For we now know that we do not make, and currently cannot make, as many masks, ventilators or as much medicine as we need to fight a pandemic virus in this country.
According to Scott Paul, of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, “The absence of adequate domestic production capacity for things like face shields and respirators ... has left us dangerously exposed during an international health emergency.”
Talk about a breach of national security.
We no longer make our own penicillin in the United States.
Think about that.
The last enterprise that did so was Bristol-Myers Squibb, headquartered in the prototypical Rust Belt town of Syracuse, N.Y. Make no mistake, deindustrialization and national medicinal security are linked.
Most of the drugs Americans need to fight AIDS, cancer and depression are made abroad, many in China.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply more than 90% of U.S. antibiotics, vitamin C, ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, as well as 70% of acetaminophen and 40% to 45% of heparin.
Much medical equipment essential to the health of the people of the nation is also made abroad. We have had to go begging for protective masks — for medical personnel initially, and then the public at-large. COVID-19 testing has been slowed because we don’t have enough, or make enough, swabs.
This is ludicrous.
Some of us are old enough to remember when virtually everything we bought, used and touched was American made, and “made in Japan” was an aberration.
“Realists” will certainly scoff at the idea of returning to that innocent time and economy.
But when, 40 years ago, Americans realized how dependent we were on foreign oil, no one scoffed at the goal of energy independence.
It is not too much to ask that America be medicine and medical equipment independent.
Antibiotics ought to matter as much as oil.
If it is true, as more and more people say, that the corona pandemic will change America, it is logical to think it will change public policy, starting with trade policy on medicine and medical devices.
Scott Paul says that the bailout package created by the president and Congress put few strings on American corporations and that under the Defense Production Act, the president can not only order business to manufacture needed goods but can subsidize said manufacturing.
Sen. Rob Portman, of Ohio, who has become something of a born-again, if realistic, protectionist, points out that the carrot of tax policy and the stick of tariffs can also be used to make our country more medicinally independent.
Americans pondering the eternal varieties at home these days will notice that one of the industries we have exported, almost whole cloth, is the one that could help take care of us when we are sick — the one that could save the lives of our loved ones in peril.
Never again should we be dependent on other nations for basic medicines and breathing devices.
This is shortsighted in the extreme, irrational and humiliating for the country — madness, really.
Trade is the way of the world and has been since 3,000 centuries before Christ. Yes, we should trade. And, no, we should not be isolationist in trade policy any more than in foreign policy.
But smart countries, with both a sense of national pride and self-preservation, put the welfare of their people first and are self-sufficient in the most essential materials and social goods.
If that does not include medicine and medical devices, we are deeply confused.
Keith C. Burris is executive editor of the Post-Gazette, and vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (kburris@post-gazette.com).
First Published: April 19, 2020, 9:00 a.m.
