The coronavirus has created new political openings for the nascent nationalist wing of the Republican Party, as immigration regulations, American manufacturing capacity, and China’s global influence — all issues believed to have contributed to President Trump’s election — have emerged as part of the discussion of how to tackle the burgeoning pandemic.

Trump himself seems to think so. “We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival,” he told reporters at a coronavirus press briefing at the White House earlier this week. “I think we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot. This crisis has underscored just how critical it is to have strong borders and a robust manufacturing sector. For three years, we've embarked on a great national project to secure our immigration system and bring back our manufacturing jobs. We brought back many jobs — record numbers."

“This experience shows how important borders are. Without borders, you don't have a nation,” Trump continued. “Our goal for the future must be to have American medicine for American patients, American supplies for American hospitals, and American equipment for our great American heroes.”

"The coronavirus is the latest example of how the American empire has no clothes,” said Ryan James Girdusky, co-author with Harlan Hill of the forthcoming book They’re Not Listening: How The Elites Created the Nationalist Populist Revolution. “The wealthiest nation in the history of the planet, that managed to destroy Hitler’s army in less than four years and bring the Soviet Union to its knees, is unable to create enough face masks and ventilators to deal with a health pandemic. If the post-Cold War neoliberal order of wars for democracy, free trade, and mass immigration were supposed to bring eternal riches and a global adoption of Western humanism, it has failed on nearly every count and must strongly be reconsidered."

Hill is a Republican strategist who sits on Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign advisory committee.

Republicans eager to follow in Trump’s populist footsteps have been especially active in confronting China’s role in the outbreak. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas have called for an investigation into Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is a close Trump ally, has introduced legislation to prevent companies owned by the Chinese government from getting any funds from the coronavirus emergency relief package.

“Every single American worker displaced by COVID19 should be fully compensated before one nickel from our treasury goes to Chinese-owned corporations operating here in the United States. Full stop,” Gaetz said in a statement. “The global coronavirus pandemic has been exacerbated by the Chinese government’s malicious misinformation and propaganda campaign against the United States and its citizens. Allowing American taxpayers’ money to go to companies owned by the Communist Chinese government is antithetical to our ‘America First’ agenda.”

Even some lawmakers who aren’t associated with the GOP’s nationalist wing are expressing these concerns. “Cheap labor or cheap manufacturing be damned if you are reliant on them for your life and livelihood,” Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, told the Washington Examiner in reference to the “significant, significant problem of supply chain” involving China.

The coronavirus has also rekindled interest in immigration control — and not just in the U.S. "Countries are starting to take dramatic measures in response to this, many remembering the value of having borders after having forgotten for quite a while," Tucker Carlson said on his prime-time Fox News show. "Denmark, Poland, and the Czech Republic have all closed themselves off from outsiders."

“President Trump's border and immigration control policies have been completely vindicated,” said Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein. “We have another event that may be an inflection point in American history, alerting Americans to the fact that our national self-determination will be in jeopardy unless we reverse course and secure our borders.”

GOP nationalists may need more political reinforcements to act, however. Steve Bannon, once Trump’s chief strategist, is gone from the White House. Jeff Sessions is no longer attorney general. Sessions is running for his old Senate seat in Alabama, but Trump endorsed his opponent in the Republican primary runoff, supporting former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville. Populists on both sides of the aisle expressed dismay that too much relief spending went to corporations, even as overwhelming majorities in Congress supported the bill.

“It was Trump’s late adopters who came to prevail in most of the power struggles in the White House. Cutting taxes, worrying about Iran more than China, easing up on the border hawkishness, and siding more with business than workers — these are some of the preferences of the later adopters,” journalist T.A. Frank wrote in Vanity Fair. “By contrast, the early Trump adopters are mostly on the outside today.”

“A nation must do its own work and control its own borders regardless of the advantages of globalized trade and the interchange of commerce,” Stein said. “The coronavirus is a unique opportunity to reflect on where we have failed to be realistic about how the cost and consequences of trying to absorb and assimilate tens of millions of people has contributed to the emerging vulnerabilities in our national security.”