Trump must make China pay for the death and misery its COVID virus unleashed

When a nation bears the blame for more than 7 million deaths worldwide, what is Washington going to do?

More than 1.2 million Americans died as a result of a plague that began in China.

Those staggering global and US figures are the numbers reported to the World Health Organization. 

They make the COVID-19 pandemic the deadliest event the human race has suffered since World War II. 

The presence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the city where the scourge originated raised suspicions from the start — was this an unnatural disaster?

China was studying coronaviruses in that laboratory, conducting “gain of function” research that often makes pathogens more infectious and deadly, yet much of America’s media reflexively dismissed any possibility of a lab leak, calling it a conspiracy theory born of racist paranoia.

That labeling didn’t silence the discussion, however:

If anything, hearing many of the same organizations that staked their credibility on assurances of Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness to serve as president insist a lab-leak scenario is just a conspiracy theory has made some Americans all the more determined to ask the questions they’re told they mustn’t ask.

Now the Trump administration has weighed in, unveiling a new White House web page last month titled, “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19.”

But if President Donald Trump thinks Chinese experiments are responsible for more than a million American deaths, how tough is he willing to get on Beijing?

He’s prepared to punish other nations for the toll their trade strategies have taken on us in mere dollar terms. 

China is the biggest offender in that respect — but the cost of COVID has been incalculably greater, in lives, not just national wealth. 

The president hit China with staggering tariffs on “Liberation Day” April 2, and if “liberation” meant anything, it was supposed to mean freeing America from Beijing’s economic power. 

Yet disentangling the trade relationship between China and America is painful and difficult, and with Wall Street howling in agony, Trump has pulled back, dropping the tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% for the next 90 days, after he had already carved out exceptions for products like smartphones and computers. 

China is economically vulnerable right now, as more manufacturing moves to neighboring nations where wages are lower, including India and Vietnam.

Trump has the tools to change China’s place in the world economy, keeping it from becoming so central to the global system that no nation could hold it responsible for the next horror emerging from the caves or labs of the Middle Kingdom.

Rather than easing the tariffs on China, the administration should put Beijing at a comparative disadvantage and prioritize tariff relief for the developing nations that are China’s emerging rivals — and, in many cases, its wary neighbors.

Punitive measures against the Chinese economy won’t bring back the victims of COVID, of course.

But they must not be forgotten, either, and there is a moral dimension to constraining China just as surely as there are strategic and economic ones. 

The moral indictments against the Chinese Communist Party were overwhelming even before COVID, with the party guilty over decades for the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese and the ongoing oppression of billions, to say nothing of the occupation of Tibet and brutal torments inflicted upon Uyghurs and other minorities and dissenters. 

None of that criminality stopped the rest of the world, including wrongheaded American administrations, from accepting China as an indispensable partner in trade, helping the communist regime rise to superpower status — an aspiring hegemon in its region with outposts and economic colonies spread across the globe.

Yet the whole world felt the lash of COVID, and if that searing experience doesn’t change the way the community of nations handles risks from China, there will be more to come. 

Nothing was able to stop the pestilence that began in China six years ago, but a war that might prove deadlier still can be averted by wise measures now.

That means taking the strongest economic steps to build up the fearful neighbors who can hem Beijing in, and stepping away from the trade relationship that hollowed out our industries while building China’s factories.

Think of it as social distancing on a grand scale.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.