Inside Trump's New Europe War Presented by

As I type from home with a sore throat, it would be great to say that this week and next are not all about coronavirus. But we don’t get to make the news, we only get to report and analyze it. Breathe deep and dive in with me.

TRUMP’S NEW EUROPE WAR

American health and policy professionals are bewildered while Europeans swing between lament and outrage. The American government that twice rescued Europe in the past century is now playing a divide and conquer game with its strongest allies, seemingly without empathy. Joe Biden (and his cooperative global coronavirus plan ) can’t get into the White House quick enough, as far as Europeans are concerned.

For weeks, President Donald Trump has called the coronavirus a “hoax” and claimed it was “under control.” It wasn’t, and now his story has flipped. Trump proposes a stimulus package bigger than 2008 and 2009 rescue packages — and the U.S. Federal Reserve is pumping more than $1.5 trillion into the banking system — yet he insists this is “not a financial crisis.” Experts agree his partial travel ban cannot contain the virus because it's already in the U.S. in large numbers.

What on Earth is going on?

How it played in Europe: Reactions this week have a different tone to past Trump dramas. This time, there’s no holding back. My London-based colleague Jack Blanchard noted Trump’s Oval Office address lacked any “expression of compassion for the victims,” but it was Trump’s misstatement that the ban extended to all European imports that really got jaws dropping. That error sent stock markets and oil prices tumbling, until the White House rowed back, by which time the damage was done. With Trump falsely describing coronavirus as a “foreign virus,” former French ambassador to U.S. Gerard Araud thinks he spies the president’s real motivation: ”Trump needed a narrative to exonerate his administration from any responsibility in the crisis.”

A message from Bank of America: President and CEO of UnidosUS Janet Murguía joins the ‘That Made All the Difference’ podcast to discuss her upbringing as the daughter of immigrant parents and how that experience informs her life’s work advocating for Hispanic-Latino civil rights and battling systemic inequality. Listen now.

What’s really behind the partial travel ban? For Tomasz Wlostowski, managing partner at EU Strategies consultancy, the message is clear. He told Global Translations: “This coronavirus measure is step one of (a) trade war with EU.” He believes Trump wants an auto sector dispute with Europe during the general election campaign as a way to prove value to Rust Belt voters. “He's been dying to do it. He needs Michigan, and he is as unhinged as he has ever been,” Wlostowski said. Former European Commission chief of staff Arūnas Vinčiūnas called it “childish revenge“ for Trump’s inability to quash the E.U.’s global trade ambitions.

Here are four things we know:

1. Trump loves to shift attention. More travel ban talk means less U.S. testing screw-up talk.

2. Trump also loves attention: With Joe Biden close to securing the Democratic nomination, Biden was getting too much attention and too much momentum this week. Only something head-spinning could have stopped that. (Trump much preferred to face Bernie Sanders in November, making it a referendum between socialism and capitalism).

3. Trump loves to destabilize: This travel ban raises fears, disrupts business and pushes Europe closer to recession. All of that is leverage in Trump’s trade and tax discussions with the EU.

4. Trump is not afraid to self-deal: The new travel restrictions sidestep his own financially struggling European properties because the U.K. and Ireland do not participate in the Schengen Zone targeted by the administration. My story here .

THE BIGGEST ALL-ROUND CORONA RISK IS ITALY — RESCUED BY CHINA

We’re already seeing both a health and economic disaster in Italy. The country’s lock-down includes closed shops, restaurants and cafés 24/7, and northern Italy’s health system (one of the best in the world) is relying on emergency assistance from China. Other EU countries refused to send supplies like medical masks.

Italy matters because its tanking economy could drag the world into recession. EU watchers have long feared Italy and its fragile banks, high debt, budget deficit and aging population. Italian growth stalled to zero in 2019 and the country is certainly in recession today. It may also be too big to save, even if there is the political will. The failure of Europeans to send even masks suggests there isn’t the will: Here’s why coronavirus will test the EU’s capabilities , again.

LESSONS FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: The world should have learned two things from the 2008 financial crisis.

1. The longer a country waits to stimulate its economy, and the longer the EU or global institutions wait to restructure bad debt, the more expensive the problem becomes.

2. Lack of street protests does not mean an absence of political backlash: protest went online instead and waited years to find its full voice in nationalist populist movements.

What the EU actually did …

Budget leniency but no coordinated stimulus: The EU has offered Italy some budget leniency: coronavirus costs won’t be scrutinized like other spending. But in lieu of anything else, the Italian government didn’t wait around for EU approval of its debt moratorium. Italy is allowing citizens to skip obligations like mortgage payments to ward off any far-right surge (the far-right League is already the country’s most popular party).

Policy blinkers: There is real expert cooperation going on behind the scenes, but little effective EU-wide political leadership. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her press conference this week to drone on about her planned EU Green Deal and industrial strategy rather than coordinating and communicating a comprehensive coronavirus response.

A message from Bank of America:

CORONAVIRUS — GLOBAL TOUR OF WHAT WORKS

China’s and Italy’s extreme lock-downs became necessary after their governments failed to quickly implement expert advice. Here are some of the governments getting it right:

South Korea — Testing: The virus is now under control thanks to a testing blitz supported by innovations like drive-thru testing . This shows democracies can beat the virus .

Singapore — Maps: The government adopted a radical transparency approach. Detailed maps help citizens and health workers manage their risk.

U.K. — Communication: Prime Minister Boris Johnson is invoking both health experts and his own celebrity to deliver critical messages.

Australia — Stimulus: Don't wait for bad numbers and don't put permanent holes in the national budget. Instead, Australia will spend 0.5 percent of GDP on payments like $25,000 tax-free (spread over six months) to many businesses and a $750 payment to social security recipients and veterans.

Taiwan — command center and temperature checks: A command center opened Jan. 20 and every public building conducts temperature checks on arrival, banning anyone with a high temperature.

POLITICAL LEADERS TAKE A HIT: Giuseppe Conte’s (Italy) approval is down 19 points since November and Japan’s nearly invisible Shinzo Abe is down 7 points. Korea’s President Moon Jae-in saw a 5-point drop in February , though Gallup reports a two-point rise in recent days. Canada's Justin Trudeau nose-dived from 43 percent to 33 percent since mid-January. While domestic protests were also a major factor, Shachi Kurl of the Angus Reid Institute said Trudeau’s next coronavirus steps “could make or break" his government over the next six months.” For now his troubles are closer to home: his wife tested positive for the virus. The pandemic may ultimately strengthen Xi and the Communist Party, China watchers say.

Politicians are contracting Coronavirus in outsize numbers: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive Friday, less than a week after sitting next to President Donald Trump over dinner, local media reported. The Brazilian president’s press secretary was photographed with Trump at the same event and also tested positive. Ministers, party leaders and MPs from Iran, U.K. France, Italy, Spain and Germany are also infected. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (whose wife tested positive), Portguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and Romania's interim Prime Minister Ludovic Orban are all in self-isolation.

THE MISINFORMATION WARS: Social media giants are fighting coronavirus fake news by changing algorithms, banning videos and debunking rumors, but it’s still spreading like wildfire, writes POLITICO's Mark Scott: “For once, this is not a failure of Big Tech." Systems dedicated to identifying coordinated misinformation aren’t working in the face of regular users failing to verify information, including politicians . Kersti Kaljulaid, Estonia’s president told Global Translations: “You do not have technological solutions: the solutions are societal." That means telling people false information exists, and that "you have to use common sense and vaccinate yourself against manipulation.”

U.S. 2020 — A CAMPAIGN WITHOUT PEOPLE

No joke. Some morbid but essential questions: The remaining candidates are men in their 70s: would you be shaking hands if you were them? What’s left of Trump’s campaign if he can’t hold rallies? What would happen in the event of large-scale deaths?

Overall, we may be looking at: Virtual conventions, Drive-thru voting, and expanded advance voting.

Crash and Bern: Bernie Sanders is losing where he won in 2016. Next week, Joe Biden is ahead 66-22 in Florida, meaning America’s third-most populous state is set to stamp out Sanders’ campaign .

MICRO-DIPLOMACY: Politics isn't all gloom this week. Lithuania celebrated 30 years of independence from the Soviet regime, and Ambassador Rolandas Kriščiūnas presented the gift to Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), co-chair of the House Baltic Caucus, the world‘s smallest copy of US Capitol building as a gift to the American people. It's a nanocopy 60,000 times smaller than the real thing. It can fit into the eye of a needle, and at just 0.15 millimeters high it looks like a dust particle until a powerful microscope reveals its design, the Lithuanian embassy said.

REALITY CHECK

WHEN FEMINIST FOREIGN POLICY DOESN’T MATCH REALITY: Mexico recently joined Sweden in adopting a specifically feminist foreign policy stance. The government got its comeuppance on International Women's Day as Mexican women went on strike Monday to protest rising violence toward women. Gallup says 67 percent of Mexican adults believe women in their country are not treated with respect, while more than 100 women have been convicted for abortions since 2007. Some sexual offenses are "contingent upon the chastity of the victim," reports Human Rights Watch, and the U.N. complains about workplace sex discrimination. Never mind Mexico's poor record of stopping and prosecuting extreme violence.

GLOBAL MAILBOX

FUTURE OF WORK — THE UNMANAGEABLE WORKFORCE: As much of the world shifts to temporarily working from home, Alison Taylor of NYU’s Stern Business School warns of a much harder problem to solve when we all return to our offices, shops and factories: inter-generational workplace conflict. Firms are about to get side-swiped by the vocal and complex demands of Gen Z (born 1995 to 2009). This isn’t just about what they wear (though they’re also informalizing our workplaces) and their sensitivities . This generation is grilling potential employers about their oil clients at graduate interviews and refusing to fly willy-nilly, and its flummoxing executives, Taylor said: “they have no idea what to do.” Gen Z is not monolithically “woke” but they are relatively aligned on environmental and diversity issues. They’re also digital natives and concentrated in information processing roles: giving them major capability to disrupt existing practices and ideas.

Share your own experiences and solutions as a member of Gen Z or a manager of them: [email protected]

POWER PLAYS AND ELECTIONS

PUTIN 2036: Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks it has a ring to it. So he’s installing himself in the Kremlin until then .

UK LAUNCHES DIGITAL TAX: The new tax will come into effect on April 1, at a rate of 2 percent of U.K. user revenue, and mostly affect American tech companies. Similar taxes elsewhere provoked threats of retaliatory tariffs by United States officials. The U.K. government said it would repeal the tax if a global deal is reached in OECD negotiations.

RE-WRITING THE TECH LOBBYING RULEBOOK: Big Tech is also Big Lobbying, leaving many others with a stake in the digital revolution somewhat sidelined in the world’s lobbying capitals: Washington and Brussels, and elsewhere. Ben Scott, a former Hillary Clinton aide, is seeking to change that with a $10 million investment from former tech execs . A new poll from Gallup/the Knight Foundation finds a broad, bipartisan backlash against big tech, specifically social media companies

YOU CAN BUY LOVE IN POLAND: The ruling Law and Justice party plans to do it via a $500 million government propaganda campaign on state-owned media, AP reported :

Sustainability

Faced with coronavirus deaths and recession risks, the world may not be making 2020 its big climate action year after all. Global green leaders like the European Union are shelving climate law debates, the Fridays for Future protests are heading online, and dirty industries from aviation to oil are begging for bailouts. Climate action advocates are facing severe and unpredictable political weather.

Click here to read POLITICO’s full Sustainability Spotlight.

INSTITUTIONALIZED

CANCEL CULTURE: Predictably, global organizations are now in full cancellation mode.

G7 foreign ministers will meet virtually (they were due to meet in Pittsburgh March 24-25). Uganda postponed the 2020 United Nations G77 summit set for mid-April. The World Trade Organizations and European Central Bank have suspended all meetings. Up next: the 2020 Olympics may be postponed.

LEFT HAND, RIGHT HAND: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte shook hands with his top disease control official at a press conference urging Dutch citizens not to shake hands anymore: Video . The Economist predicts the end of the firm handshake .

AMERICAN THUMBS DOWN TO U.N. PERFORMANCE: Gallup's annual United Nations poll of Americans found 54 percent of Americans think the U.N. is doing a poor job compared to 43 percent who rate it doing a good job (the last time Americans offered a net positive assessment of the U.N. was in 2002). Still, 64 percent of U.S. adults think the U.N. should play a significant role in the world.

THE WOMEN SHAPING BRUSSELS: A 2020 ranking by POLITICO now online .

Mark Carney is moving to Ottawa with his family while serving as the UN sustainable finance envoy.

A message from Bank of America: On the latest episode of the ‘That Made All the Difference’ podcast, Bank of America’s Alicia Burke speaks with Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS — an organization that has been fighting for civil rights and breaking down barriers for the Hispanic-Latino community for the past 50 years. "I'm going to dedicate every fiber of my being to making sure that we can still see that American dream as a reality for everyone. And it's critical that everyone still understands that they have a role to play in breaking down systemic barriers. If we can acknowledge that ... we can keep the American dream alive for everyone.” Listen to the full conversation here.

VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB

World War Z A tale of a pandemic: Written in the form of an oral history of “men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the apocalyptic years.”

POLITICO’s EU Confidential Podcast — this week featuring Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the U.K. Parliament foreign relations committee, and POLITICO’s reporters living in Italy’s lockdown.

THANKS to editor John Yearwood, Luiza Ch. Savage, Halley Toosi, Anita Kumar, Jack Blanchard, Sarah Wheaton.

Follow us on Twitter Ryan Heath @PoliticoRyan