In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead speculates about what the foreign policy of a Biden Administration might seek:

There will certainly be changes. One will be on climate policy. While moderate liberals may not embrace the entire “Green New Deal” agenda that featured prominently in the Democratic presidential primary, a strong climate program is central to Democratic thinking these days. Mr. Biden’s America would not only return to the Paris agreement; it would put U.S. diplomatic weight behind a stronger, faster push to reduce global emissions.

There will also be surprises. Those looking for a Biden administration to return to the free-trade agenda that presidents from George H.W. Bush through Mr. Obama prioritized should brace for a shock. It isn’t only Republicans like Mr. Trump and Sens. Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley who have broken with the free-trade orthodoxy of past decades. Jake Sullivan, a former top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and national security adviser to Mr. Biden in the Obama White House, published an article this February calling for significant changes.

He and co-author Jennifer Harris (another Obama veteran) argue for a fundamental shift away from what they call the “neoliberal” agenda of recent presidents. “Policymakers must move beyond the received wisdom that every trade deal is a good trade deal and that more trade is always the answer,” they write. A “postneoliberal” agenda would promote industrial policy (large public investments in green energy and other climate-friendly technologies as well as funding to match China’s support for tech). It would include the reshoring of strategic manufacturing capabilities, “a laser focus on what improves wages and creates high-paying jobs in the United States,” and aggressive campaigns against firms taking advantage of low-corporate-tax havens like Switzerland and Ireland.

A Biden administration would likely share Mr. Trump’s position that China is America’s major geopolitical competitor, but it will pursue that competition in a different way. While the current president views existing international architecture with suspicion, Mr. Biden would likely see it as an indispensable element in building an effective international approach to Beijing. A Biden administration would not share Mr. Trump’s willingness to disrupt relations with both European and Asian allies, and it would attempt to smooth relations with important U.S. allies like Japan, South Korea and Germany. But Mr. Biden’s White House would likely combine any friendliness with a new emphasis on human rights and a skepticism about the value of trade—which could lead to some interesting conversations with regional powers including Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and even India.

On Iran, most Democratic foreign-policy experts regret Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, but there is less consensus on what to do going forward. So many things have changed since 2017 in Iran and the region that simply returning to the status quo ante Trump is unrealistic. The unilateral sanctions the Trump administration imposed on Iran may not have brought Tehran back to the bargaining table on the president’s terms, but a Biden administration might not want to give up the leverage those sanctions provide without receiving something from Iran in return.

much of which sounds pretty good to me which makes me suspicious of it. How much is based on VP Biden’s published statements and how much on wishful thinking? Is it mostly the latter?

A President Biden would need to protect his left flank so I have little doubt that climate change will figure in his foreign policy as it has not in President Trump’s. In the face of a global depression which is exactly what will happen if the U. S. doesn’t come back online quickly, pursuing U. S. carbon emissions as a major focus of foreign policy will look increasingly surreal.

Indeed, unless the U. S. economy recovers more quickly than seems likely at the present, I doubt that President Biden will have the time to take much of an interest in it at all.

But all of this is getting far ahead of ourselves. At this point we can’t be sure that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee let alone whether he will be elected.

At Lancet Swedish physician and researcher Johan Giesecke leaps to the defense of the approach Sweden has taken to facing the COVID-19 pandemic. After noting that, although Sweden’s mortality rate from the virus is higher than its immediate neighbors, it is lower than that of the UK, Spain, and Belgium, he remarks:

PCR testing and some straightforward assumptions indicate that, as of April 29, 2020, more than half a million people in Stockholm county, Sweden, which is about 20–25% of the population, have been infected (Hansson D, Swedish Public Health Agency, personal communication). 98–99% of these people are probably unaware or uncertain of having had the infection; they either had symptoms that were severe, but not severe enough for them to go to a hospital and get tested, or no symptoms at all. Serology testing is now supporting these assumptions.

These facts have led me to the following conclusions. Everyone will be exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and most people will become infected. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in all countries, but we do not see it—it almost always spreads from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. This is the real pandemic, but it goes on beneath the surface, and is probably at its peak now in many European countries. There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.

Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them. Admittedly, countries have managed to slow down spread so as not to overburden health-care systems, and, yes, effective drugs that save lives might soon be developed, but this pandemic is swift, and those drugs have to be developed, tested, and marketed quickly. Much hope is put in vaccines, but they will take time, and with the unclear protective immunological response to infection, it is not certain that vaccines will be very effective.

In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care.

There are a lot of assumptions packed in there. For one thing is it really true that “most people will become infected”? It seems to me there is a conflict among assumptions about exposure to the virus, susceptibility, and the figures being reported on antibody testing.

There’s also an unspoken assumption about the Swedish economy. Will Sweden emerge from the pandemic with less economic damage than its neighbors? At this point the numbers don’t really support that.

You might be interested in this post by Wilson VornDick at The National Interest on how the State of Missouri is using Chinese-style lawfare against China:

Essentially, the “Three Warfares” is a strategy meant to create and shape political power for the Chinese Communist Party, both domestically and abroad per China analyst Peter Mattis. Broken down into three distinct parts, the first of the “Three Warfares” is media or public opinion warfare (舆论战) which attempts to shape public opinion. Elsa Kania, writing in Jamestown Foundation, notes the second part, psychological warfare (心理战), as that which “seeks to undermine an adversary’s combat power, resolve, and decision-making, while exacerbating internal disputes to cause the enemy to divide into factions.” Finally, she describes lawfare, the third part and most pertinent to Missouri’s lawsuit, as envisioning the “use of all aspects of the law, including national law, international law, and the laws of war, in order to secure seizing “legal principle superiority” and delegitimize an adversary.” Ostensibly, the PRC has leveraged legal tactics and techniques such as those mentioned from territorial disputes over the South China Sea to economic arbitrations in the World Trade Organization. Moreover, growing anecdotal evidence suggests that it is becoming difficult to discern a clean break or firewall between actions of the PRC under the CCP’s party-state apparatus apart and separate from state-owned or private Chinese corporations, assets, or citizens. This is because the actions, dictates, and aspirations of the PRC prioritize dual-use, military-civilian fusion, and national strategies like Made in China 2025 make less and less of a distinction.

It will be amusing to see how this plays out. I think the overwhelming likelihood is that the Trump Administration or some future administration moves to quash it.

I was extremely disappointed by Christopher Hill’s piece in Foreign Affairs. In it he asks a question: what does Washington want from China? He never actually ventures an answer.

Moreover, much of the piece is baloney. Here are a few examples:

But although China seemed to be covering up the outbreak during those chaotic days in December, it is also very possible that Chinese health and security agencies simply didn’t know what they were dealing with in Hubei Province as thousands of citizens descended on an overmatched health system.

It is already documented that the Chinese authorities were claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was not being communicated via “community spread” when they knew that it was.

The world rightly gave a rapidly developing China membership and appropriate status in a panoply of international financial and economic institutions, hoping—never a sufficient foundation for decisions of this kind—that China would become a responsible stakeholder in an international system that made it a beneficiary.

That is a misstatement. It would be more correct to say that “the world hopefully gave a rapidly developing…etc.” It was never right and that was pointed out at the time. Its management was also bungled thoroughly.

To some extent, China’s rise has suffered from poor timing. Its emergence coincided with increasing automation among its partners, and China, rather than technology, was blamed for the inevitable job losses.

That’s balderdash. The numbers on this could not be clearer. It wasn’t automation that cause the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the U. S. following China’s admission to the WTO. It was China.

China’s effort to supply PPE to countries in desperate need of such equipment was greeted with suspicion in some quarters as a new effort to gain preeminence and broaden China’s malign and nefarious influence in the world.

It didn’t help that so much of what the Chinese authorities sent was defective.

I honestly don’t know what Amb. Hill’s purpose in the piece was. It certainly was not to inform. Was it intended as encouragement? Propaganda? Application form for a role in a future Biden Administration?

Opening with a quote from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

“We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work—that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. That’s not the case,” he said. “They’re not working, they’re not traveling, they’re predominantly downstate, predominantly minority, predominantly older.”

the editors of the Wall Street Journal continue with some pertinent observations:

More investigation is needed, but the virus may be spreading mostly within multigenerational households or public housing. Collecting more information about infected individuals’ habits would have been especially useful early in the pandemic before most businesses were shut down. This data could reveal patterns that suggest the most likely venues for transmission.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will start collecting employment and demographic information as part of its antibody tests to pin down how the virus has spread. Mr. Cuomo this month released final results from a random antibody test of 15,000 people across the state, which raised some questions that need to be further investigated.

For instance, estimated infections are 10 percentage points higher in the Bronx than Manhattan, which is more dense. Latinos were also more than twice as likely to have antibodies than Asians. Low-income folks are more likely to work in jobs interfacing with customers, but other behavioral differences may account for their antibody disparities.

Surprisingly, millennials who are known to crowd bars and clubs were about as likely to carry antibodies as baby boomers. Even more curious, 12% of health-care workers tested positive for antibodies compared to 20% of the general population. This is good news since it suggests that the virus isn’t mainly being spread via the health-care system. Surveying more people through antibody and diagnostic tests could help experts better identify the major transmission vehicles.

Scientists often use such observational studies to identify risk factors for diseases when they can’t do randomized experiments. Regression analysis can help discern the variables that most influence an outcome while controlling for others. While studies can’t control for all confounding variables, they can still show important patterns.

Incorporating such surveys in random population tests could also let states reopen more safely. People could be asked how often each week they take mass transit, dine out, use a gym or visit a salon. Those who test positive could be compared to those who test negative, controlling for other factors.

This is of much more than merely academic interest. The measures that have been taken to slow the increase in COVID-19 cases including social distancing, “stay at home” directives, closing of public facilities like parks, and face mask directives, are all guesses. Sometimes they’re informed guesses; sometimes less so. It’s important to know whether sitting in a restaurant with other diners puts you at risk. It’s important to instill confidence in the public and it’s important to the restaurant—it may determine whether the enterprise remains viable. Theoretically, there may be a risk but in practice the risk may be so low as to be negligible. As Yogi Berra put it, in theory there’s no difference between practice and theory but in practice there is.

I think that Claire Jones’s paean to global supply chains in FT Alphaville:

Spare a thought for the global value chain. The complex web of relationships between the world’s makers has pushed down costs and opened up new markets – driving strong global growth and low inflation through the nineties and much of the noughties.

The backlash really began with the rise of populism, but these chains are facing a fresh wave of attacks following the outbreak of the coronavirus. The reason being that the focus on low-cost and just-in-time production has made our economies less robust, less able to weather shocks.

largely misses the point. I’m not arguing that every product that we consume should be manufactured in the United States from U. S.-made components or ingredients. I’m arguing that no conceivable economic benefit offsets the risks of relying on China for strategic goods like pharmaceuticals or personal protective equipment (PPE). You can understand why that is by reflecting on one, simple question: what happens when China goes offline, as was the case for several months?

Nothing in Ms. Jones’s piece addresses that. There’s also the issue of liability. As I have pointed out ad nauseam there is no such thing as a robust system of civil law. When a U. S. brand receives substandard merchandise or components from its offshore suppliers, there’s basically no recourse. U. S. consumers can sue the brand in a U. S. court but the brand will need to sue its supplier, if that remedy is available at all, in a court in which the supplier is at a decided advantage. “Well, we saved 10 cents on a $200 product” is cold comfort to someone who has been poisoned by adulterated drugs or infected with a serious infection due to faulty protective gear.

And let’s face it. No company actually does due diligence on their East Asian supply chains. The costs of doing so would outweigh the value of extending the supply chain that far. They just believe they can trust their suppliers. Under the circumstances the notion that we can just trust Chinese suppliers is laughable.

We have a vital, urgent need to shorten supply chains and make them more resilient. Don’t hold out the hope of manufacturing everything here. Yes, manufacture more here but also manufacture more in Canada, Mexico, and Central America where we can actually monitor what’s going on and exert a little more control.

I’ll try to summarize Scott Gottlieb’s latest Wall Street Journal op-ed:

1. The SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests we were getting from China were lousy.
2. Those from Quest and Abbott (“reputable companies”) are a lot better.
3. They still give false positives.
4. Using the results of passing antibody tests to allow or forbid certain actions (“antibody passports”) will never meet civil rights muster in the U. S.
5. Is there some way to “incorporate evidence of immunity into a person’s overall health”?

I’m less interested in that last than I am in getting some handle on the actual scope of the disease from place to place within the U. S. We still have no real notion of that.

I have not commented about the dropping of charges against former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn or about President Obama’s remarks about it and I plan to keep it that way. I honestly don’t know what to believe. Partisans of all stripes have strong opinions. I don’t know whether the Obama Administration, posssibly at the direction of President Obama himself, railroaded Gen. Flynn or whether AG Barr is engaging in a gross miscarriage of justice and I honestly don’t see how I can arrive at a conclusion other than on an a priori basis.

I’m not even going to bother quoting Robert Samuelson’s latest Washington Post column. Suffice it to say that he’s worried about the federal debt. I think there are good reasons to be worried but none that he lists. The Congress and the pundits on which so many Congressmen rely for their economic advice are mostly folk Keynesians. There are a few who are folk Modern Monetary Theorists.

A real Modern Monetary Theorist believes that a government that is a monetary sovereign can issue itself any amount of credit as long as that’s exceeded by the growth in aggregate product without fear of hyperinflation. A folk MMT-er believes monetary sovereign can issue itself any amount of credit full stop. A real Keynesian believes that a shortfall in aggregate demand by a well-timed and targeted stimulus using credit the monetary sovereign issues to itself. A folk Keynesian believes that all government spending produces economic growth.

What’s being right now is a matter of political if not economic survival. The federal government is “borrowing” (issuing credit to itself) to give money to consumers. That’s sort of like a payday loan. It will tide people over but it won’t necessarily produce economic growth. If it stimulates an economy it’s likely to be those of our trading partners.

That’s our immediate problem. The longer term problem is a shortfall in aggregate product. No Congressman now living has any experience in dealing with such a problem. Their immediate inclination will be to deal with the problem they know and understand using the tools they’re accustomed to using. We cannot solve that problem by spending more on health care or education. Those are consumption. Don’t be surprised at unexpected run-on effects.