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The announcement by the Liberal government that it will contribute $159 million to fight COVID-19 in poorer countries was couched in its usual hipster social justice blarney – the aid will be in line with its “feminist international assistance approach,” it said.

Sending money overseas will be unpopular in some quarters for more nativist reasons. When the first tranche of assistance was announced last month, Conservative leadership candidate Erin O’Toole tweeted “foreign aid can wait.”

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But opponents of an international response are wrong. This is a global pandemic and to subdue it will take global action.

Unfortunately, that is not the conclusion that has been reached by the president of the world’s only indispensable country in a global crisis.

Donald Trump paid lip service to a united front in a G20 leaders’ communique late last month. But every action – from blocking the export of face masks to Canada to trying to buy exclusive access to a German-made vaccine – have belied his professed multilateralism. An order of 200,000 masks bound for Germany was allegedly “confiscated” in Bangkok by the Americans, on the grounds they were produced by a U.S. company – 3M – in China. A German official called it “an act of modern piracy”.