While China is ‘recovering’ (according to its ‘official’ numbers), the rest of the world is escalating aggressively in terms of the exponential growth in Covid-19 cases (and sadly, deaths).
How bad can it get if the rest of the world does not go full-China in terms of authoritarian crackdowns?
Given the current rate of expansion – and assuming exponential growth – the virus could infect one billion people within 81 days (up over age around 10x every 16 days).
But as Stanford grad Grant Sanderson lays out in great detail and simplicity, it doesn’t work that way as what really happens is a ‘logistic curve’ as opposed to an exponential curve…
While this video uses Covid-19 as a motivating example, the main goal is simply a math lesson on exponentials and logistic curves. The following video is more focused on Co-19 itself:
The COVID-19 economic crisis is different. It hit the economic giants all at once – the G7 nations and China. And the economic strikes are widely spread, hitting many sectors all at once. It is not a credit crisis, or a banking crisis, or a sudden-stop crisis, or an exchange crisis. Today’s crisis is a bit of all these. Given the transient nature of the underlying medical shock, this column argues that governments should focus on ‘keeping the lights on’ using costly but quick measures to ensure the circular flow of money continues to circulate. The goal should be to reduce the persistence of the crisis and avoid the unnecessary accumulation of ‘economic scar tissue’.
How should we think about containing the COVID-19 economic crisis?
Christmas lights, when I was a kid, were wired in series. If one lightbulb blew, the whole string went dark. My Depression-era parents taught me to fix it by checking each bulb, one-by-one, all one hundred of them. The tree was dark for a long time. But since bulbs were expensive and labour was cheap back then, the prolonged darkness was worth it.
Today, I would do it differently. I would tend towards a ‘costly but quick’ option, say, replacing all bulbs at once. After all, goods are cheap, labour is expensive, and Christmas is short.
I suggest that policymakers think about the ‘economic medicine’ for the COVID-19 crisis in the same way.
Governments should choose quick options that keep the economy’s lights on without worrying too much about costs. After all, people are the important thing, money is cheap, and this medical shock is transient.
This economic crisis is different
Economic crises are like buses; there’s always another one coming along (IMF 2020). But this one is different. And it is different in two main ways.
1. The underlying shock has hit all the G7 nations and China at the same time.
Unlike the Asian or Global Crisis, the COVID-19 economic crisis did not start (economically) in one or two nations and then spread to many others. The medical shock, as measured by the number of new cases, started in China in late 2019. But it was only a matter of a few days before cases showed up in some G7 nations. By 31 January 2020, every G7 nation had at least one case.
2. The medical shock is striking the economy at multiple sites.
The most-studied economic crises start at one site. Banking crises start with the banks, exchange rate crises start in the forex market and central bank reserves, sudden-stop crises start with international capital flows, and so on. This one is not like that.
Three types of economic shocks
To organise thinking about what we should do, we need to ‘simplify to clarify’ when it comes to the nature of the economic shocks that the virus has sparked. Three facets are key (Baldwin and Weder di Mauro 2020).
First, the disease hits output by putting workers into their sickbeds; this is like temporary unemployment. Or economically, it is like August in Europe – the labour force ‘downs tools’, but only temporarily. In the US and some other nations, this may also lead to a direct hit to spending since some workers do not get paid when they are sick. Others are in the ‘gig’ economy where they don’t get paid if they don’t work.
Second are the public-health related containment measures aimed at flattening the epidemiological curve (see my previous column, Baldwin 2020) – factory and office closures, travel bans, quarantines, and the like.
Third is the expectations shock. As in the Global Crisis of 2008-09, the COVID-19 crisis has consumers and firms all around the world crouched in a wait-and-see mode. This is most obvious in the massive drop in travel and hotel stays – but probably only because those data are released so fast. Leading indicators like the Purchasing Manager Indices (PMIs) are all down sharply.
Strike sites: Where are the three types of shocks striking the economy?
The COVID-19 crisis has struck the economic ‘machine’ in several places at the same time, as Figure 1 illustrates schematically.
Figure 1 COVID-19’s multiple strikes in the circular flow of income diagram
The figure displays a version of the well-known circular money flow diagram (e.g. Mankiw 2010). In simplified form, households own capital and labour, which they sell to businesses, who use it to make things that households then buy with the money businesses gave them, thereby completing the circuit and keeping the economy ticking over.
The key point is that the economy continues running only when the money keeps flowing around the circuit. Roughly speaking, a flow-disruption anywhere causes a slowdown everywhere. The diagram here adds in a few more complications by allowing for a government and foreigners. It also separates consumption expenditure and investment expenditure.
The red crosses show where the three types of shocks can, or are, disrupting the flow of money – the economic dynamo, as it were. Starting from the far left and moving clockwise:
Households who don’t get paid may experience financial distress or even bankruptcy – especially in the US where medical bills are a major source of people going broke (Debt.org 2020).
This reduces spending on goods, and thus the flow of money from households to the government and firms.
The domestic demand shocks hit the nation’s imports and thus the flow of money to foreigners.
This doesn’t directly hit domestic demand, but it dampens foreign incomes and thus spending on the nation’s exports. This can slash the flow of money into the nation that used to be coming from export sales. In the 2008-09 Global Crisis, these two strike zones were particularly important leading to what came to be known as the Great Trade Collapse (Baldwin 2009, Bems et al 2012).
The drop in demand and/or direct supply shocks can lead to a disruption in international and domestic supply chains.
Both lead to further reduction in output – especially in the manufacturing sectors. The hit to manufacturing can be exaggerated by the wait-and-see behaviour of people and firms. Manufacturing is especially vulnerable since many manufactured goods are postpone-able – things you can wait for without huge costs for at least a few weeks or months.
Business bankruptcies (Benassy-Quéré 2020).
Many businesses have loaded up on debt in recent years (BIS 2019), so they may be vulnerable to reductions in the cashflow. The bankruptcy of the British airline Flybe is a classic example. This sort of shutting down of firms creates further disruptions in the flow of money. Creditors don’t get paid, often workers don’t get paid fully, and in any case become unemployed. To the extent that the firms that go under are suppliers to or buyers from other firms, the bankruptcy of one can put other firms in danger. This sort of chain-reaction bankruptcy has been seen, for example, in the construction industry during housing crises.
Labour layoffs, sick leaves, quarantines, or leaves to care for children or sick relatives.
This is the last but perhaps most obvious of the strike zones. When workers lose their jobs – even when they have unemployment insurance or other income support – they tend to cut back spending on less necessary, more postpone-able items. The precautionary motives may be less evident for workers who keep their jobs but are taking leave, but as mentioned, this sort of leave is not recompensed in all G7 nations, or not for very long.
What should governments do?
The basic principle should be: keep the lights on. The COVID-19 crisis was sparked by a medical shock that will dissipate. It does not seem to be an especially deadly pandemic, so although many will die and each death is a tragedy, it is not like the plague where the workforce will be reduced significantly on a permanent basis. The key is to reduce the accumulation of ‘economic scar tissue’ – reduce the number of unnecessary personal and corporate bankruptcies, make sure people have money to keep spending even if they are not working. A side benefit of this would be to subsidise the sort of self-quarantine that is needed to flatten the epidemiologic curve.
There are already a number of excellent plans posted. My favourite, by Benassy-Quéré et al., was posted on VoxEU.org on Wednesday.
Watch Live: President Trump To Declare National Emergency Over Covid-19
President Trump is set to hold a news conference at 3pmET to discuss the coronavirus as cases and deaths soar in the US.
The virus has killed at least 40 Americans and there are more than 1,700 cases nationwide as of Friday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
And set to get worse…
Bloomberg News reported he plans to declare a national emergency, a move that had been under consideration for some time.
As The Hill reports, declaring a national emergency would allow wider use of federal funds by state and local authorities, some of which have been overwhelmed by the fast-moving coronavirus.
The press conference will come as House lawmakers are likely to vote on sweeping legislation to provide financial help to victims.
We suspect Trump will also take this opportunity to blast the Obama administration(he spent part of Friday morning lashing out at them over its response to the swine flu), The Fed(for failing to take stronger action on the economy), and the current Democrats(he tweeted this morning that because we have had a very strong border policy, we have had 40 deaths related to CoronaVirus. If we had weak or open borders, that number would be many times higher!).
Six Weeks After Dalio’s “Cash Is Trash”, Cash Sees Biggest Inflow In History
The past week has been one of market superlatives: the biggest Dow point crash ever, the biggest Stoxx 600 drop on record, the longest lock “limit down” in the Emini future ever observed, the biggest rebound in the Dow since the financial crisis, the biggest VaR shock in history, the fastest drawdown to a bear market from a market peak…
… and so on.
Here are a few more: last week’s unprecedented market moves caused real panic among investors, both institutional and retail, and according to the latest weekly Lipper fund fund flows data compiled by Bank of America, we saw a whopping $4.7 billion pulled out of equities, $25.9 Billion pulled out of bonds, the largest outflow ever…
… as well as:
The biggest IG + HY + EM debt outflow ever ($34.1bn).
The biggest financial sector outflow ever ($3.3bn).
The biggest government bond ever ($13.9bn).
Second biggest inflow to gold ever ($3.1bn).
And the punchline: at $136.9 billion, last week saw the biggest cash inflow ever.
Why is this notable? Because less than 2 months ago, well… see for yourselves:
It is hot takes like these that make us wonder if all those apocryphal rumors about how Bridgewater became the world’s biggest hedge fund are actually true.
Had enough excitement yet? At least the stock markets are following an established script: the bubble pops, the elevator drops, for a while it stops… and then investments sink to the deepest sub-basement, where they linger for long, long time. Hello, next great depression…. We know how that story goes, even if it hurts.
This corona virus is something else. It engulfs whole populations in a fog of confounding narratives. Is it no worse than a bad common cold, except for old folks already half-gone with chronic illness? Or does it really slam people even in the midst of life? Well, Wuhan hospital director Liu Zhiming, 51, went down two weeks ago, and gastroenterologist Xia Sisi, 29, and Dr. Peng Yinhua, also 29, and some prominent Iranian politicians, and lots of very sick healthcare workers from Korea to Italy. Whatever corona virus is, I’m not persuaded that it’s a hoax.
One monster banging around in that fog is the narrative that China started this thing simply to get rid of Mr. Trump. There’s a real baby-and-bathwater proposition. Would China, in effect, blow up its export economy for that, i.e. commit suicide? Because a lot of those prior arrangements will probably not come back — the manufacturing supply lines for this-and-that, the fabulous cornucopia of plastic goodies extruded from all those smoking factories and flushed out to the world, the whole glorious lets-get-rich extravaganza that Deng Xioping kicked off forty years ago. It’s looking like the global economy is on the rocks, perhaps for good, as we knew it. Is China as plumb crazy as, for instance, America’s political Left?
If anything, China has only validated Mr. Trump’s point that America bargained away its industrial independence, and must become more self-sufficient again. True enough. Where I depart from MAGA is my sense that the industrial age itself has probably shot its wad, and that whatever America makes of itself going forward is likely to be a much more modest and simpler way of life, without a lot of dazzling bells and whistles we’ve become accustomed to, and perhaps some genuine hardship.
I say that, readers will recall, because it really all comes down to the energy inputs available and that part of the picture has gone pretty grim in just the past week. The convergence of world events has driven a wooden stake through the heart of the shale oil business. From the get-go, shale oil was a loser because it just cost too much to get that oil out of the rock it was trapped in. It only worked as a financial stunt during the low interest lending orgy of the past decade. It was a magnificent stunt, you understand, goosing US production to 13 million barrels a day — energy independence, with all those short-term feel-good vibes — but it was just a stunt and now it’s over. The reality of this has yet to penetrate the American hive-mind.
Coronavirus neatly imploded that financing scaffold, and now, with world business locked down and markets cratering, capital is vanishing. As I’ve averred before, the shale companies spent ten years proving to investors that they can’t make a red cent. Their bonds and notes are sinking into sub-investment-grade oblivion. Some of the major producers — Whiting, Oasis, Chesapeake — have lost over 90 percent of their share value and will probably soon be gone. Who would lend them more money now, even if the money was there? (Maybe Uncle Sam’s wicked step-son, Mr. Trump, if it comes down to that… we’ll see.) Meanwhile, oil is cheap, but demand is gone, planes are not flying, ships are not sailing, stadiums are empty, lots of things are shutting down, and quite a bit of it may not ever come back.
US politics were already crazy enough before all this suddenly happened. The crisis of the past few weeks also saw the supernatural elevation of Joe Biden to the utterly implausible role of last-vehicle-standing in the Democratic Party demolition derby. Who do they think they are kidding? Not only is Joe Biden observably gone-in-the-head — that is, clearly unfit to be president — but he’s loaded down with a steaming, fetid cargo of easily proven grifting offenses so clunky and obvious they would embarrass a South Philly mobster. I’m sure Mr. Biden stayed in the race solely to avoid investigation for his operations in Ukraine and China with son, Hunter.
Corona virus has provided a chance for the former veep to duck out of the spotlight, where he spent recent weeks blathering incoherently and starting fights with voters. And now something really nefarious may be a’foot with the Dems. If the wounded Bernie Sanders does not use Sunday’s debate as an opportunity to expose Mr. Biden’s dementia and finish him off, here’s the DNC’s playbook: Hope that the stock market crash and broken economy sink Mr. Trump in public opinion, then contrive to nominate Mr. Biden and get a black woman on the ticket as veep.
That part of the story has been trotted out already. I’m beginning to wonder whether that black woman will happen to be Michelle Obama, and I’m also wondering whether Barack Obama is behind the scenes orchestrating this. Of course, Mr. Biden, if elected, will serve in office less than a week – just long enough to hustle him off with the 25th amendment. Voila! The Obamas are back in the White House, out-Clintoning even the Clintons! Happy days are here again! (Not.)
Bank of Canada Announces Emergency 50bps Rate Cut, As FinMin Unveils C$10BN Support Program
After a day of relentless central bank interventions across Asia and Europe, which jumped the Atlantic this morning when the Fed announced not one but 6 emergency QE POMOs, moments ago Canada joined the panic response, when the Bank of Canada announced an emergency 50bps rate cut, lowering the overnight rate from 1.25% to 0.75%, generally in line with the market’s expectations.
According to the central bank, “this unscheduled rate decision is a proactive measure taken in light of the negative shocks to Canada’s economy arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent sharp drop in oil prices.”
The BOC maintained its easing bias, stating that it stood ready to adjust monetary policy further if required, while it dropped the reference in its January statement which stated policy was at an appropriate level. In its policy statement, the Bank said that while the economy had been operating close to potential, with inflation at target, the virus is a “material” negative shock to the Canadian and global outlooks; business activity in some regions has fallen sharply and supply chains have been disrupted, reflective in CAD and commodities, the statement noted.
The BOC also believes that as the virus spreads, business and consumer confidence will deteriorate further, which will depress activity. In light of all these developments, the central bank said that the outlook was clearly weaker now than it was in January.
Finally, the Bank said it “has also taken steps to ensure that the Canadian financial system has sufficient liquidity.”
The Bank of Canada today lowered its target for the overnight rate by 50 basis points to ¾ percent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 1 percent and the deposit rate is ½ percent. This unscheduled rate decision is a proactive measure taken in light of the negative shocks to Canada’s economy arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent sharp drop in oil prices.
It is clear that the spread of the coronavirus is having serious consequences for Canadian families, and for Canada’s economy. In addition, lower prices for oil, even since our last scheduled rate decision on March 4, will weigh heavily on the economy, particularly in energy intensive regions.
The Bank will provide a full update of its outlook for the Canadian and global economies on April 15. As the situation evolves, Governing Council stands ready to adjust monetary policy further if required to support economic growth and keep inflation on target.
The Bank has also taken steps to ensure that the Canadian financial system has sufficient liquidity. These additional measures have been announced in separate notices on the Bank’s website. The Bank is closely monitoring economic and financial conditions, in coordination with other G7 central banks and fiscal authorities.
Separately, Canada’s finance minister said Canada is ready to take extraordinary measures to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, and to that purpose, Canada will establish credit support program to provide additional C$10 billion to businesses and stimulate the economy.
In response to the BOC announcement and modest fiscal stimulus, the Canadian dollar initially dropped but quickly regained all losses as the market was expecting the rate cut anyway, with money markets pricing in around 40bps worth of easing.
Insider Buying Surges To Nearly Decade Long High Amid Coronavirus Sell-Off
Those asking who is “buying while there’s blood in the streets” over the last couple months may very well have their answer: corporate insiders.
While we are still waiting for the first big activist to take a swing – or the first signs of large M&A that can sometimes come with selloffs, there’s one group of people that aren’t waiting to pull the trigger.
Executives are hitting the clearance rack and buying shares of their own companies at what Bloomberg calls a “breakneck” pace during the first couple of weeks of March. The total purchased has exceeded the last two months combined and insider buys are outpacing sales by the most since 2011.
Megan Horneman, director of portfolio strategy at Verdence Capital Advisors commented:
“When insiders are buying, they think their companies are well undervalued. It can be a good sign that we’re trying to find a bottom around here — not necessarily that it is the bottom but at least that we’re trying to find the bottom here.”
The S&P 500 is now trading at a 14% discount to its 5 year average, which could perhaps be why almost 1,400 executives have bought shares of their own companies. The list includes the CEO of Newell Brands and Kinder Morgan. Buyers outnumbered sellers by nearly a 3:2 ratio.
The last two times insiders bought similarly were in July 2011, preceding a 10% rally in the next two quarters, and in December 2018, preceding a 40% bounce off lows as the market rallied throughout 2019.
Dan Russo, chief market strategist at Chaikin Analytics said:
“To the extent that it’s executives and board members putting their own money to work, that’s encouraging. Who knows the company better than the people who run it?”
But, if you wanted to make a counterpoint, you could argue that this time it’s different.Neither in 2011 nor 2019 were we dealing with a potential existential threat similar to the coronavirus. Additionally, CEOs sometimes have a habit of buying too soon, before the market bottoms.
During 2008 and 2009, insider buying spiked, but then fell as the market continued to fall. There was a similar pattern during the dot com bubble burst of the early 2000’s.
Wayne Wicker, chief investment officer of Vantagepoint Investment Advisers commented:
“It does not tell you anything about the direction of the market because the market will overwhelm any insider buying based on the fear and optimism that swings markets in general every day.”
He concluded: “Insiders are a reasonable barometer for the outlook of companies — who better to know what your future prospects may be than the guys that are trying to put together the strategic plan and watching current sales and inventories than senior management?”
Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner told his clients back in January 2020, “It was time to sell . . . . I am afraid they can lose 40% to the downside.”
Well, we are more than halfway there, and Nenner warns it’s going to go lower – much lower. Nenner says,
“You know it was all over the media, and they were always laughing at me that my long term target is 5,000 for the DOW Jones. They ask me how are we going to get there, and I say I don’t know. Now, this thing with the virus, there is no business anymore because the United States has stopped flights with Europe. So, maybe we can see how we get there.”
I think people have finally stopped laughing about Nenner’s 5,000 DOW call.
Another way the markets can crash is a full blown banking crisis that is brewing in Europe. At the center is Deutsche Bank (DB), which the IMF called the “most systemically dangerous bank” in the world back in 2016. Nenner predicted on USAWatchdog.com that if DB stock crashed through a $6.44 price target, it could go to $0. DB closed Thursday at $5.53, down 15% in one day. Nenner says,
“I have real estate I want to sell because in Amsterdam, it’s going through the roof. I decided not to do it because I don’t trust the banking system. For years, we have talked about Deutsche Bank, and I said if it goes below $6.50, it could go into bankruptcy. Now it’s $5.50. They are interconnected to most European banks. So, something is really cooking over there, and I don’t really trust the banks. That’s why I am not selling my real estate. . . . I don’t trust the banks anymore.”
So, Deutsche Bank is the canary in the coal mine? Nenner says,
“Definitely. If DB goes, I don’t know what all the other banks are going to do. . . . It looks like DB can go to zero. . . . Next step is $3.90. If it goes to that, it’s finished.”
DB is just one big bank in deep financial trouble, and it’s much bigger than just DB. Nenner says,
“Other banks are also down 20%. Italian banks are very important. What happened in Italy? They closed everything down. There is no fashion business anymore. There is no car business anymore. There is nothing going on. How do you think these banks are going to make it?”
Nenner says he is forecasting a banking crisis, and the tip of the iceberg is Deutsche Bank. Nenner says,
“They are interconnected to all the other banks in Europe. I don’t know how the other banks can survive if this bank gets into trouble.”
Does it get worse before it gets better? Nenner says,
“I think we are heading for a depression. Usually we go into a recession at a 6% GDP. Now, we have 1.5% to 2% GDP. Usually, the Fed Funds are 6%, 7% or 8%. Now, they are almost zero. What are they going to do when we get a recession? You get very fast a negative GDP. You get very fast a negative interest rate, and it’s a big mess. This has been going on for many, many nice years, and all the Fed Presidents had tricks and let it go. They did not want to have a depression in their lifetime like the 1930’s. So, they kept it going, and now there is no way out anymore.”
So, there is no avoiding a depression? Nenner says, “Yep, and it is going to be very bad.”
Nenner is also bullish on gold and silver because there is “no other place for investors to hide.”
Twitter Won’t Remove Chinese Official’s Conspiracy Theory Suggesting US Army Secretly Infected Wuhan With COVID-19
While Zero Hedge remains banned from Twitter for suggesting that a Chinese level-4 biolab experimenting with bat coronavirus (which is 96% genetically identical to COVID-19) – located roughly 900 feet from the Wuhan wet-market widely considered as ‘ground zero’ for the new disease – may have had something to do with the global outbreak the novel coronavirus, Twitter has refused to delete a conspiracy theory from a Chinese official accusing the US Army of introducing it into Wuhan.
Conspiracy theorist Lijian Zhao, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lijian Zhao claimed in a tweet this week that “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” citing prior televised testimony by CDC Director Robert Redfield in which he said that early COVID-19 cases were mistaken for regular influenza.
1/2 CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted some Americans who seemingly died from influenza were tested positive for novel #coronavirus in the posthumous diagnosis, during the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. #COVID19pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3
2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3
According to Quartz, “The conspiracy posits that 300 athletes from the US military who in October attended the 7th Military World Games in Wuhan, where the epidemic first broke out, were infected with the virus, thereby spreading it in China.”
And according to the Daily Caller, “A tweet from Chinese politician Lijian Zhao suggesting the United States is trying to keep secret a plan to inject the virus into China does not violate Twitter rules, a company spokesman said. The spokesman reiterated the company’s existing rules but did not provide a reason for speaking anonymously.”
Heaven forbid Twitter choose a CCP conspiracy theory over Occam’s razor.
“We’re Pulling Out All The Stops”: Trudeau Promises To Help Canadians With Their Bills As He Leads Nation From Home
After his wife, Sophie Gregoire, revealed last night that she had been diagnosed with Covid-19 following a trip to London, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – who apparently hasn’t been infected – said during a noon press conference on Friday that he is feeling fine, and will continue running the country from the comfort of his home office until he’s officially cleared to return to the office.
During a news conference held outside his home
Trudeau says Canada is “pulling out all the stops” to respond to COVID-19.
“I know that you’re worried. You’re worried about your health, about your family’s health. About your job, your savings. About paying rent. About the kids not being in school.” https://t.co/7qcwjopHmqpic.twitter.com/OO019N254O
In the mean time, Canada will be “pulling out all the stops”
Trudeau ticked off a litany of daily stressors that are affecting Canadians, from school cancellations creating urgent child-care needs, to workers who might need to forgo paychecks.
“We will help Canadians financially,” Trudeau said, promising to help out with child care, as well as a “fiscal stimulus package” that will be delivered “in the coming days.
NEW: Justin Trudeau says he is self-isolating for two weeks after his wife tests positive for coronavirus, though he has “no symptoms, and I’m feeling good, and technology allows me to work from home.” https://t.co/saJgXKpl32pic.twitter.com/4V8at5z7jH
Trudeau also said he’s spoken with world leaders including Trump, UK PM Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, and assured Canadians that the G7 would deliver a “coordinated response” to the crisis. The leaders of the organization’s nation-state members will join a conference call on Monday to decide (or not) exactly what the nature of that response will be.
He said he’d be keeping in touch to provincial governors and indigenous leaders during his stay at home, and added that he’d be speaking with several of them later in the day.
In keeping with his liberal beliefs in open borders, Trudeau said Canada would continue to monitor foreign travelers and decide on “further measures that will be based on science.” In the mean time, the administration will be restricting international flights to fewer airports, to improve monitoring and screening, while asking some travelers to “consider” self-quarantine. He also advised Canadians against all “non-essential” traveling abroad, especially to areas impacted by the virus, at this time.
Of course, by declaring a national emergency under the Stafford Act, President Trump will gain the authority to use $40 billion of disaster-relief funds to combat the outbreak in the US. He has also instituted unequivocal travel bans. And in the US, Trump’s political opponents are insisting that this still isn’t enough.
If this isn’t enough, how will Trudeau’s plan be any more effective?
