By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jarrell Dillard · BUSINESS
U.S. consumer confidence fell in November to a three-month low as the coronavirus resurgence prompted a slide in Americans’ expectations for the economy and job market.
The Conference Board’s index decreased to 96.1 from an upwardly revised 101.4 reading in October, according to a report Tuesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for the measure to slip to 98.
The gauge of expectations dropped 8.7 points, the most since July, to 89.5 this month, while a measure of sentiment about current conditions eased 0.3 point to 105.9.
The figures coincide with the start of the holiday-shopping season that will help shape estimates of consumer spending for the quarter. Less optimism, against a backdrop of surging infections that are sparking more government restrictions, suggests retail sales and hiring will slow.
The smallest shares of respondents since March said they expected better business conditions and more jobs in the next six months, the report showed.
“Heading into 2021, consumers do not foresee the economy, nor the labor market, gaining strength,” Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a statement. “In addition, the resurgence of Covid-19 is further increasing uncertainty and exacerbating concerns about the outlook.”
At the same time, more consumers surveyed indicated they were likely to make big purchases in the months ahead. Greater shares in November said they plan to buy automobiles, homes or appliances. Buying plans for previously owned homes were the strongest since March 2019.
Also, the share of survey respondents who said they expected their incomes to increase crept up to 17.6%, the highest since March.
Consumers that said business conditions are currently favorable decreased to 17.6% from 18.6%. The percentage of consumers who said jobs are hard to come by was little changed.
By The Washington Post · Lesley Wroughton · WORLD, AFRICA
Hundreds of people in a town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region were stabbed, strangled and hacked to death in an apparent ethnically based attack that may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, Ethiopia’s human rights watchdog said Tuesday.
The commission said at least 600 people were killed in the town of Mai Kadra in western Tigray on Nov. 9 when local youths known as Samri, aided by the then-local administration, went door to door killing those they identified as from the minority Amhara and Wolkait ethnic groups.
The killings took place throughout the night of Nov. 9 as security forces of the region’s ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, were retreating from the advance of federal government troops, the commission said.
The victims were beaten to death with sticks, stabbed with knives, machetes and hatchets, and strangled with ropes, according to the report. Many others were severely injured and property looted or destroyed, the commission said.
“The killings, bodily and mental injury, as well as the destruction that went on throughout the night . . . indicate the commission of grave human rights violations which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes,” the commission said.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission’s findings could not be independently verified, but they echo similar accounts reported earlier by Amnesty International, which cited witness statements, photos and videos as evidence.
The commission’s findings, the result of a week-long investigation in the town, are the first evidence of possible war crimes being committed in Tigray, where government troops and TPLF forces have been fighting since Nov. 4 in a conflict many fear could destabilize the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a statement called the commission’s findings “heart-wrenching” and urged the international community “to condemn these atrocious acts of crimes against humanity.”
There was no immediate response to the commission’s report from the TPLF. The regional government and refugees fleeing the fighting have accused government forces of targeting ethnic Tigrayans.
The commission warned that the death toll from the massacre could be much higher, as many people were still missing and bodies were hidden in fields outside the town.
Survivors told investigators that some residents in the town hid people in their homes, in churches and in farm fields as the Samri gangs raided the town.
“The unimaginably atrocious crime committed against civilians for no reason other than their ethnicity is heartbreaking,” the commission’s chief, Daniel Bekele, said in a statement, calling for the perpetrators of the attacks to be brought to justice.
Abiy, who comes from the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, on Sunday issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Tigray’s leaders and combatants to surrender before government forces attack the capital Mekele, with a population of about half a million. The deadline is Wednesday.
The conflict erupted when Abiy sent troops to Tigray after the TPLF army and local militia attacked government military bases in the region and tried to steal artillery and other military equipment. The conflict spread across the border to Eritrea when Tigrayan forces fired several rockets at its capital and sent at least 40,000 refugees fleeing into Sudan.
By The Washington Post · Loveday Morris, Emily Rauhala, Shibani Mahtani, Robyn Dixon · WORLD, HEALTH
BERLIN – In the new frontier of vaccine diplomacy, there are two paths: stockpile or share.
The first way is unfolding in the United States – with two promising coronavirus vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna on the cusp of approval – as the Trump administration focuses on domestic distribution from private labs.
The European Union and other wealthy democracies have bought up much of what’s left of the initial doses, but also will lend support to a World Health Organization-linked effort to eventually expand supplies to countries in need.
The other approach comes from China and Russia, which have rushed to share their own state-backed vaccines with nations scrambling for supply, positioning themselves to possibly expand their political and economic interests in the process.
The contrast goes well beyond the crisis of the pandemic, reflecting how the post-World War II world order is challenged by the rise of authoritarian powers and the retreat of the United States during the outgoing Trump administration.
“Global health and pharmaceutical interventions are getting sucked into balance-of-power politics,” said David Fidler, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For the U.S. this creates geopolitical nightmares, because we are not in the game.”
The pandemic, he said, becomes a “force multiplier,” accelerating waning U.S. influence.
The ultimate outcome depends, of course, on how the vaccine race plays out.
On Monday, another group in the vaccine hunt, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, said its vaccine was up to 90% effective when subjects received a half-dose, followed by a full dose one month later.
Beijing and Moscow are marshaling the vast powers of their states to develop vaccines for domestic and international use, accompanied by grand claims of scientific and manufacturing prowess.
There are critical questions about safety and efficacy – or even how much each country can produce. But, for the moment, those questions are overshadowed in a seller’s market.
So far, the United States has essentially ceded the field. It has declined to join more than 170 other countries in Covax, the WHO-backed program to deliver billions of vaccine doses to less-developed nations, and has not outlined a plan for sharing doses with anyone else.
Kendall Hoyt, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, predicted that President-elect Joe Biden would find some way to engage – either by joining multilateral efforts on vaccines, forging bilateral deals, or both.
“It’s the most powerful bargaining chip there is right now,” Hoyt said.
But China is signing agreements for early vaccine access in regions where it has historically battled the United States for influence. Western pharmaceutical companies say that just meeting their existing orders from Europe and elsewhere will be a huge logistical challenge.
A recent analysis from researchers at Duke University found that high- and middle-income countries have already purchased 3.8 billion doses of promising vaccines, with options for 5 billion more. The team predicted that billions of people in developing countries could be waiting until 2024.
The WHO-linked Covax effort is seen as an important backstop for poorer countries that would otherwise struggle to source vaccines. But efforts have been slow to get off the ground, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning at the virtual Group of 20 summit this past weekend that “the Chinese are knocking at the door” of developing nations.
“And [the Chinese] are saying that they have a vaccine they’ll make available to me now in the short term,” Fidler said. “Not later, when Covax might have something available.”
China has five vaccine candidates in the final stages of trials, which have taken place in regions of strategic importance to Beijing. Testing is underway in more than a dozen countries, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.
In the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is among those to receive a vaccine, China’s Sinopharm received emergency-use approval months ago.
Beijing has offered $1 billion in loans to countries that would otherwise struggle to pay to buy its vaccine, according to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
But perhaps the biggest advantages for Beijing could be won in Southeast Asia, where China and the United States compete for strategic and cultural influence.
China has signed agreements with Malaysia and Indonesia for priority access to the Sinovac Biotech vaccine, moving in swiftly with trials earlier this year as cases mounted in the two nations and economies faltered.
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Wearing a mask stamped with the Indonesian flag, Ridwan Kamil, the governor of West Java, held his arm out for the cameras after receiving his coronavirus jab in September.
One of 1,620 volunteers to receive the Sinovac vaccine, he has raved about his experience. It’s seen as gesture of solidarity with China aimed at helping Indonesia get back on its feet as the country of 268 million people – now the worst-hit by the coronavirus in Southeast Asia – stares down a recession.
Indonesia’s food and drug agency said Thursday that Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine have all reached out about the possibility of vaccine trials and partnerships with Indonesia’s pharmaceutical companies.
Sinovac, one of China’s coronavirus vaccine front-runners, published mixed findings from its two first clinical trials last week. The company reported that the vaccine generated lower levels of protective antibodies in the bloodstream compared with those arising in recovered coronavirus patients.
Beijing has said it won’t use the vaccine for diplomatic leverage. But in public remarks, Chinese officials have linked the vaccine to greater cooperation and outreach – echoing China’s foreign policy strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to build transport and commercial links across Asia and beyond.
As the Trump administration has stepped back from global health leadership, most notably by threatening to withdraw from the WHO, Beijing has pointedly stepped in.
Chinese President Xi Jinping in a video statement Saturday told the G-20 that China was “willing to strengthen cooperation” with other countries to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.
“We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford,” he said.
There are questions about what depending on China for doses could mean for countries in Southeast Asia, particularly as they push back against Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, for instance.
Sebastian Strangio, author of a recent book on Beijing’s relationship with Southeast Asia, said China’s vaccine strategy is part of a broader campaign to cast itself as a “helpful, understanding regional partner – and an inevitable one.”
Strangio predicted that Beijing’s use of leverage will generally be “subtle” rather than a straightforward quid pro quo, such as China’s request to the Malaysian government to release dozens of Chinese fishermen held for illegally entering Malaysia’s waters last month. The appeal came during the same meetings as negotiations on a vaccine. The men remain jailed, and a news portal, Malaysiakini, published letters from Malaysians about the case, including one saying Malaysia will not be “held to ransom” by the Chinese vaccine.
China is “going to be smart about it,” Strangio said. “It is going to be a lot of small concessions that add up over the long term.”
Russia’s vaccine diplomacy is part of a broader push by President Vladmir Putin to reassert the country as a global power. Even the name it chose for its first covid-19 vaccine – Sputnik V – evokes the 1950s Cold War space race.
Russian officials claim to have provisional orders from some 50 countries for 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V in the next year and say they have negotiated deals with firms in South Korea, India, China, Kazakhstan and E.U.-member Hungary, led by nationalist President Viktor Orban.
Trials are underway or planned in India, the U.A.E., Brazil, Venezuela and longtime Russian ally Belarus.
– – –
The rush to roll out the vaccine before Phase 3 trials has raised questions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
Sputnik V’s developers, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), say the vaccine is 92 percent effective. A second Russian vaccine has been registered and a third is in development.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of the RDIF, declined an interview request but has portrayed criticism of Sputnik V as a Western effort to undermine the project.
The Kremlin, too, is hailing Sputnik V in its diplomatic outreach. “Nowadays, the issue appears on the agenda of Putin’s discussions with all of his foreign colleagues,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a recent interview with journalists.
Russia has always tried to project soft power by emphasizing its technological achievements, said Grigory Golosov, political analyst at the European University at St. Petersburg. “This only adds one more topic to this more or less continuous flow of propaganda,” he said.
But the international push is also aimed at building support for the Russian vaccine at home, he added. An August poll in Russia by the Levada Center found that 54% of those surveyed would not take the vaccine even if it was free because of distrust and fear.
And then there is the question of capacity.
Speaking at an investment forum last month, Putin conceded that Russia faces problems in swiftly ramping up production because it lacks the equipment. Russia has been forced to slash its overly optimistic plans to make 30 million doses this year; it now estimates it will produce roughly 2 million.
“Russian vaccines exist. They work, and they are safe and efficient,” Putin said last Tuesday at a summit of BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “The question is how to arrange the mass production.”
He told the G-20 virtual summit Saturday that vaccines must be made universally available to all countries, rich or poor, and said Russia was ready to distribute its vaccines to those who need them.
“Products for immunization need to be common public assets,” Putin told the summit. “Russia, of course, is ready to provide needy countries with vaccines developed by our scientists.”
The White House opted out of multilateral efforts, in part because of its ongoing feud with the WHO over the agency’s initial coronavirus response and Trump’s claims that the U.N. agency was “China-centric.”
Biden has pledged to rescind the WHO withdrawal letter but has not publicly committed to Covax or any other plan.
But the race has already started, and analysts say China and Russia are likely to take every advantage they can before a Biden administration gets into gear or private Western companies look to markets further afield.
“There’s a strategic game going on, but the U.S. is not playing,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
By The Washington Post · James McAuley, Karla Adam, Michael Birnbaum · WORLD, HEALTH, EUROPE, HEALTH-NEWS
PARIS – Leaders in France and Britain on Tuesday announced a tentative easing of lockdown restrictions heading into the Christmas holiday season, even while admitting that the coronavirus was far from under control.
The decision to reopen shops, resume indoor entertainment and permit limited holiday gatherings appeared to rub up against a scientific consensus that has underscored the risks of indoor socializing and urged against lifting restrictions too rapidly. But many European leaders seem reluctant to keep their economies shuttered or stand in the way of family members seeing each other after a year marked by long periods of strict confinement measures and social isolation.
French President Emmanuel Macron began a national address on Tuesday by stating what would remain the same in the coming weeks: “We will have to continue to stay at home, to telecommute when possible, to give up private meetings, family gatherings and all nonessential travel.”
But he outlined a three-step deconfinement plan could see nonessential shops reopen starting Saturday and cinemas and theaters welcome back audiences in mid-December. Restaurants would need to remain closed into January, he said, and an evening curfew would remain in place. But exceptions would be granted for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve so that people could “share these moments together among family,” Macron said.
Vaccination, he added, would begin in late December or early January, and would not be mandatory.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced plans for the national lockdown to end on Dec. 2, to be replaced by a region-by-region tiered system of restrictions.
Most of the country would be in the highest two tiers, requiring the closure of restaurants and pubs except for takeaway. But in many places, shops, gym and salons would be allowed to reopen, and indoor and outdoor spectator sports could resume.
On Tuesday, the four nations of the United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – also agreed to an easing of restrictions that would allow loved ones to meet during the Christmas period. From Dec. 23 to Dec. 27, up to three households can form a “Christmas bubble” and mix indoors. During the five day period, Brits will be able to travel across the country and move between tiers.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove told Sky News on Tuesday that families will have “something closer to a normal Christmas.”
In Spain, the government is reportedly considering limiting family and other social gatherings over the holidays to just six people, in addition to imposing a 1 a.m. curfew on both Dec. 24 and Jan. 31.
According to El Pais, the government’s draft document, entitled “Proposals for Covid-19 public health measures for the celebration of Christmas fiestas,” recommends socializing only with other members of the same household but limiting all outside contacts to six people.
Germany could soon follow suit.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to meet with leaders of the country’s 16 federal states on Wednesday to determine whether to extend a month long November lockdown, which shuttered bars and eat-in dining but kept schools and stores open.
Draft proposals extend measures but include the possibility of a week-long ease in contact restrictions over the Christmas week, allowing gatherings of up to 10 people and an unlimited number of children under 14.
But behind the easing of restrictions are continued concerns over case numbers, hospitalizations and death tolls, which suggest Europe is barely past the peak of the second wave.
“We have slowed down the circulation of the virus, but it remains very present in France as in the entire northern hemisphere,” Macron said in his speech. “We must continue our efforts.”
In France, at least, the numbers have showed some sign of improvement after nearly a month of lockdown. On Tuesday, the Health Ministry recorded 9,155 new cases of covid-19 in the previous 24 hours, but still a relatively high death toll of 458 in the same period, in keeping with totals recorded in previous weeks.
In comparison with the spring, France’s current ICU occupancy is similar to the level when it announced a loosening of restrictions after the first wave. As of Monday, there were 4,438 covid-19 cases in its ICUs. On April 28, the day Macron announced plans to loosen measures, there were 4,307 in ICU beds.
But its hospitals are more saturated now than they were the first time around: numbers have been declining for only a week, compared to two weeks of declines before the springtime loosening, and there are 31,449 hospitalizations now, 14 percent higher than in the spring.
In Britain, Tuesday’s announcement permitting loosened restrictions for the Christmas holidays came shortly after the government said the latest daily death toll was 608, the highest total recorded since May.
And unlike in May, when Johnson announced the first easing of restrictions after four weeks of emptying hospitals, numbers are still rising. There were 13,767 covid patients in English hospitals on Monday, the most since April 22 and double what they were a month ago. ICU occupancy is also still rising. The only small comfort is that the speed at which hospitals are filling may have started slowing over the last week.
The British government urged people to continue to exercise caution, especially with those who are vulnerable. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, but it’s also the season to be jolly careful, especially with elderly relatives,” Johnson said in a press briefing on Monday.
Macron warned citizens that if the government’s public health guidelines were not followed, the virus could very well return. He cautioned against overconfidence despite the brief respite of the holiday season.
“There are always a lot of uncertainties, and we have to keep a lot of humility in this matter, this virus has taught us that,” he said.
Biden picks diverse, tested national security team
InternationalNov 24. 2020President-elect Joe Biden speaks with mayors at the Queen in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman
By The Washington Post · Annie Linskey · NATIONAL, POLITICS
WILMINGTON, Del. – President-elect Joe Biden announced a diverse set of nominees for top diplomatic and foreign policy posts Monday – including the first Latino and first immigrant as homeland security secretary and the first woman as director of national intelligence – as he sought to convey momentum and inevitability in building his administration.
Biden’s choices, including John Kerry in a new climate ambassador post, reflected his comfort with international affairs and an intent to signal the international community that a transfer of power is moving forward, even as President Donald Trump refuses to accept his loss at the ballot box.
Antony Blinken, whom Biden has selected as secretary of state; Alejandro Mayorkas, the Cuban-born homeland security secretary-designate; and Avril Haines, tapped as director of national intelligence, all have lengthy experience at the agencies they will now lead.
Biden is expected soon to name former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen to be his treasury secretary, according to three people in close contact with aides to Biden. If confirmed, she would be the first woman to hold that position, which was established by George Washington. Biden last week said that he would choose a treasury secretary “acceptable to all elements” of the Democratic Party.
The names on the team that was announced Monday suggest that Biden has decided for now to avoid choices that would trigger heated political fights. Republican senators had signaled that they would strongly oppose former national security adviser Susan Rice as secretary of state, for example, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a favorite of liberals for treasury secretary, would have faced forceful resistance.
In contrast, the individuals Biden named Monday have longtime relationships with many Republicans. They inject a new diversity into the foreign policy leadership and signal that Biden intends to show the world a different face after the Trump years.
The selections seek to tell allies that the United States is back as an international partner, even as Trump takes actions such as adding sanctions on Iran during his final stretch in office, and they also seek to provide reassurance to the country’s demoralized diplomatic corps.
“They are experienced and crisis-tested,” Biden said in a statement introducing the choices. “They will keep us safe and secure. And they are leaders who look like America and reflect my core belief that America is back and that we lead not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
The president-elect plans to formally introduce the officials Tuesday at an event at the Queen, a Wilmington theater that was the venue for a number of Biden’s campaign events and has become a provisional headquarters as he prepares to take power in January.
Unlike Trump, who favored outsiders, or President Barack Obama, who often turned to up-and-coming political stars, Biden’s nominations so far are heavy on technocrats known more for competence than sparkle. Many had been rumored for weeks to be taking on big roles in the new administration.
“It’s kind of a bread-and-butter approach to governing,” said Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary and CIA director. “You’re not going for the headline, you’re going for people who you know can do the job and people you can work with.”
Other high-profile choices announced Monday were Jake Sullivan, a Biden adviser who will become national security adviser, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a longtime diplomat tapped to represent the United States at the United Nations.
In contrast to such figures, Trump’s first secretary of state was Rex Tillerson, a corporate executive with no government experience, and his first national security adviser was Michael Flynn, a fiery retired general who led “Lock her up” chants against Hillary Clinton at the Republican National Convention.
“It’s the difference between a president who basically rolled the dice on appointees because he had no experience in government, had few friends, and kind of operated by gut instinct and a president who knows the people he’s appointing and has had experience with them,” Panetta said.
The highest-level pick is Blinken, who has deep ties to Biden, serving as staff director at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden chaired the committee before becoming vice president. Blinken was national security adviser in Biden’s vice-presidential office and also worked as deputy secretary of state, helping craft the Obama administration’s Syria policy.
Despite their closeness, Blinken famously broke with Biden to support military action in Libya, and he also advocated for American action in Syria. But in his emphasis on international cooperation and help for refugees he is aligned with Biden in shifting sharply away from the Trump worldview.
Kerry, who will take on a climate portfolio, is another longtime Biden ally. He acted as a surrogate for Biden during the primary, crisscrossing snowy Iowa to stump for the candidate even when he was low in the polls.
Kerry’s climate position will include a seat on the National Security Council, putting him in the room with key decision-makers amid foreign policy deliberations. It’s a signal that Biden intends to elevate climate change as an issue after an administration that played it down and even ridiculed it.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who is outspoken on the need to fight climate change, called Kerry an “excellent choice” on Twitter. “President-Elect @JoeBiden has again demonstrated his deep commitment to follow science to save our planet and create millions of jobs,” Inslee wrote.
Biden has faced considerable pressure to appoint people with diverse backgrounds to positions of power, and he promised to do so throughout his campaign. Among his more resonant moves Monday was selecting Mayorkas to lead the Department of Homeland Security – making him, if confirmed, the first immigrant and first Latino to head an agency that oversees border control and immigration laws.
The agency became a flash point during a Trump administration inhospitable to people seeking refuge in the United States, including a policy that separated thousands of families. Years later, 545 children remain in U.S. care because the federal government has been unable to locate their parents, according to a recent report.
Mayorkas noted the historic significance of his nomination Monday.
“When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge,” he wrote on Twitter. “I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”
Mayorkas was an architect of Obama’s program to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, a signature initiative that Trump has sought to dismantle.
The elevation of Haines to director of national intelligence will make her the first woman in that post, coordinating the country’s sprawling intelligence agencies – including the CIA, which also is headed by a woman for the first time in its history, Gina Haspel.
Trump has been at war with his own intelligence officials for much of his presidency, challenging their conclusions and becoming frustrated when they have not supported his conspiracy theories. Biden said Monday that under Haines the intelligence community “will be supported, trusted, and empowered to protect our national security, without being undermined or politicized.”
In choosing Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the U.N., Biden tapped an African American woman to represent the country before the international body. And he elevated the role to Cabinet level, a move that increases its status and suggests that he expects Thomas-Greenfield to have a role in internal deliberations.
Sullivan worked for Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state before a stint on the foreign policy team in the Obama White House. He was a senior policy adviser to Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign, and was widely expected to be her national security adviser had she won.
When Trump prevailed, Sullivan moved to New Hampshire and has been teaching, including as a senior fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy. But during the general election, Sullivan was frequently spotted traveling with Biden and made a mark in domestic policy by playing a key role shaping Biden’s “Build Back Better” economic plan.
“I will do everything in my power to keep our country safe,” Sullivan said after his selection was announced.
Biden’s announcements came as Trump’s efforts to hang on to the presidency looked ever more precarious Monday.
Michigan’s Board of Canvassers voted to certify the state’s election results. A General Services Administration official issued a finding that the transition can begin. And four more Republican senators, Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said they’d seen nothing to cast doubt on Biden’s win.
The choices Biden announced Monday, beyond including several longtime allies, worked together in the Obama administration.
“The most striking thing about this group of national security advisers is how well they know each other,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander at NATO. “They are smart, collegial, seek no drama, and are deeply loyal to each other and their boss. It is a stark contrast with the previous administration, to say the least.”
Biden’s nominees have pushed policies that Trump used to fuel his rise
InternationalNov 24. 2020President-elect Joe Biden speaks with mayors at the Queen in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman
By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Carol Morello · NATIONAL, POLITICS
WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden’s initial slate of nominees demonstrates that he aims to reverse much of President Donald Trump’s agenda with figures who have promoted the policies that Trump rebuffed, denigrated and used to help fuel his rise to power.
Biden’s top picks, announced Monday, in the past helped push for trade deals, aimed to sign international treaties and advocated for foreign wars, positions that after Trump’s victory in 2016 triggered widespread soul-searching among Democrats over how they had misread the sentiments of voters on whose support they had long counted.
What they learned from that defeat and how they try to govern this time will be a major test of whether Biden feels a need to respond to the anxieties among supporters of Trump – who in November received the second-most votes in American history, behind only Biden; whether he views his election as a sweeping mandate to shift in an entirely different direction; or whether he settles somewhere in the middle.
At least initially, some of the nominees and their allies suggest that they will not slip easily into the same positions they took when last in power. Some of Biden’s picks believe that Trump benefited from highlighting problems that the Obama administration underplayed or failed to address, particularly the economic populism that was more widespread than they believed, both domestically and internationally.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic and the simultaneous economic collapse, that populist streak has not lessened. Trade deals will be harder to pursue than they were years ago, and the nation seems to have little appetite for foreign intervention.
But Biden’s campaign also was defined by calling the Trump era, if it were held to a single term, “an aberrant moment in time.” So his victory is being read by Biden and his allies as something akin to the revenge of the Washington establishment.
Biden’s early commitments are in many ways meant to undo Trump’s actions, using the same people who created those policies in the first place, in a symmetric reversal of Trump’s own outsider effort to undo the Obama administration’s legacy.
If not household names, Biden’s picks are steeped in the ways of Washington. Former deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken, a longtime Biden adviser, will become secretary of state, a position once held by John Kerry, who now will be climate envoy. Jake Sullivan, who was national security adviser to Vice President Biden, will now become national security adviser to President Biden.
Biden is expected to name as his treasury secretary Janet Yellen, who would be the first woman to hold the prominent post. Trump, breaking with precedent, declined to reappoint Yellen as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve in 2018.
Biden tapped Alejandro Mayorkas, who held several posts in the Obama administration, as the nation’s first Latino homeland security secretary; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a former career Foreign Service officer, as ambassador to the United Nations; and Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, as the first female director of national intelligence.
Biden’s picks are all known quantities whose nominations signal a return to a more predictable era of American policy. By design, they seem meant to project a dutiful competence as Biden creates a government overseen by those who have run it before.
Many of his picks have spent most of their adult lives in Washington, forging deep relationships with those who have done the same and finding familiarity in the think tank speaking circuit, in the cocktail party crowds, and in writing for wonky but influential publications. They all have long-standing relationships with Republican lawmakers, which could smooth their confirmation hearings and open the possibility of some bipartisanship, and they are well known among NATO and Middle Eastern allies.
They helped negotiate the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal. They advocated for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal that was part of a strategic pivot toward Asia. All were shredded by Trump.
In a recent pre-election interview with The Washington Post, Blinken said that a Biden victory “sends a powerfully positive jolt through the international system that America is back. But then you have to act on that.”
He acknowledged that Trump had strained global alliances and often isolated the United States on the world stage, in a way that will test the Biden administration’s ability to recalibrate its diplomatic approach.
“The central dilemma,” he said, is that the world now requires “more rather than less collective action, and yet rising nationalism, eroding faith in government, faltering institutions . . . make the international cooperation we need harder than ever to achieve.”
While Biden’s team has advertised the reversal of Trump’s actions as its main objective, some of the president-elect’s aides have acknowledged that Trump’s victory in 2016 forced them to question previously held beliefs.
Sullivan, who supported the Obama administration’s TPP trade pact, has since acknowledged that Democrats overlooked the potentially negative consequences of such trade deals on American workers. Trump blamed both his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, and Biden for destroying manufacturing jobs with the NAFTA trade deal.
In a September report, Sullivan underscored how trade deals can drive employers to pull out of U.S. communities and disrupt people’s livelihoods with few available alternatives. Democrats have often responded to this problem with federally funded economic-assistance programs, which Sullivan said were often “too little, too late.”
It remains unclear whether Sullivan and other members of Biden’s team have a view of trade that is more than just cosmetically different from previous Democratic administrations, a prospect his defenders reject.
“I think it would be a mistake to say that just because these are names we know that it’s going to be a repeat of policies we’ve seen,” said Jenna Ben-Yehuda, president of the Truman Center, a foreign policy organization on whose board Sullivan sits. “These are smart people who’ve seen the world shift under Trump.”
U.S.-China relations, which plunged to historic lows during Trump’s tenure, also cannot be easily reset, said several allies of Biden.
“On China, 2021 is not 2016. We are in a very different place,” said Wendy Sherman, the former No. 3 official at the State Department under Obama who worked closely with Biden and his team.
She said the Biden administration probably will continue to confront China as Trump did in areas such as security and emerging 5G technology, but would also seek cooperation in critical matters such as nuclear nonproliferation and climate change. “The Biden-Harris administration likely will have a sophisticated, complex but very clear-eyed relationship with China,” she said.
Blinken said in the Post interview that the administration will take its time in figuring out China.
“We need to step back,” he said. Biden “is very focused on basically putting ourselves in a position of strength from which to engage China so that the relationship moves forward more on our terms rather than theirs.
“By every key metric, China’s position is stronger, and ours is weaker, as a result of President Trump’s leadership. His actions have helped advance most of China’s strategic goals – weakening American alliances, withdrawing America from the world and leaving a vacuum for China to fill; a green light to trample on human rights and democracy; debasing our own democracy by attacking it.”
Still, Blinken and others have suggested that the era of American interventionism is probably fading. And while he has robustly rejected Trump’s “America First” philosophy, many in the foreign policy establishment are still grappling with what comes next.
“The fact is, whatever tolerance most Americans had for the global role the United States embraced after World War II began to fade with the collapse of the Soviet Union and was shattered by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 financial crisis,” Blinken co-wrote last year in a Post opinion piece with Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Whoever wins office in 2020 will have a hard time bucking a trend that preceded Trump and will likely survive him.”
Like Biden, Blinken believes that the first priority is getting America’s own house back in order. One of the primary things Blinken has learned during the Trump era, said a person closely familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, is the ability of outside groups to have a much greater influence on foreign policy.
Over the past four years, a rethinking has occurred among the foreign policy establishment – and among Biden’s Cabinet picks – over some of the fundamental shifts that have occurred as a result of Trump.
Even as Biden has received a parade of congratulatory phone calls from world leaders, there are still major questions about the potency of global populism, which saw the rise of not just Trump but also leaders such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Thomas Shannon, a former State Department official who spent 35 years as a diplomat, characterizes the new team as setting a different course, not a restoration.
“If we look back, we’ll turn into a pillar of salt,” he said, citing the biblical tale of what happened to Lot’s wife when she disregarded orders and looked back as they fled Sodom and Gomorrah.
Shannon said the world has changed dramatically – not just since Trump won the 2016 election but since 2008, when Obama won.
“What this election was about in many ways is allowing the U.S. to set a course for itself into the future. What I think Biden’s team represents are people who know how to get things done,” he said.
“I think these people are painfully aware of what’s happened over the last four years, and they’re very intent on returning the U.S. to meaningful engagement with the world,” Shannon added. “But they recognize we have to earn our way back. It’s not just a question of opening the door, stepping out and saying, ‘Here we are, we’re ready to assume leadership now.’ It has to be won again.”
For interracial couples, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff are a ‘monumental’ symbol
InternationalNov 24. 2020Sen. Kamala Harris leans on husband Doug Emhoff after being introduced by Joe Biden as his running mate during an event in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 12, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys.
By The Washington Post · Sydney Trent · NATIONAL, FEATURES, POLITICS, RACE, RELATIONSHIPS
On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, Aisha Cozad watched on television as Joe Biden and his vice-presidential choice Kamala Harris held their clasped hands triumphantly aloft. But her eyes were also on Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, who was standing off to one side clapping adoringly. It was clear who was in the spotlight and who was the cheerleader.
Cozad was moved because Emhoff was a man so publicly supporting his powerful, ambitious wife. And she was moved because Emhoff is White and Harris is Black.
“Given the current state of race relations, it’s a powerful thing to say that we don’t have to accept these roles as society would have us play them out,” said Cozad, a 46-year-old African American whose husband, Scott, 44, is White. “We don’t have to accept what society says it’s comfortable with. We can, in fact, determine our own path.”
When Harris takes office in January, she will make history as the country’s first female vice president, first Black vice president and first vice president of Asian heritage. But together Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants who identifies as Black, and Emhoff, a Jewish entertainment lawyer, represent yet another less-heralded first: the first interracial couple at the highest reaches of the U.S. government.
Their union is being celebrated by a small but growing segment of the U.S. population: intermarried couples, who now make up about 17 percent of new marriages and about 10 percent of all marriages, according to a 2017 Pew Research report.
The Harris-Emhoff marriage is “really monumental” in its symbolism, said Amanda Brown Lierman, 35, who lives with her husband, Kyle, in Takoma Park, Md. “It’s good for everyone to see that on a national level and normalize it.”
Dana Tofig echoes the word “normalize,” and then takes it another step. “Not only is it the first time you have had an interracial couple at the highest levels of power, but it’s a White male who is saying my Black wife’s job is so important that I’m willing as a White man to give up my job in service of that,” said Tofig, 53, who lives with his wife, Cindy Murphy-Tofig, in Rockville, Md. He was referring to Emhoff’s post-election announcement that he would leave his law firm.
Like the Cozads, the Liermans and the Tofigs, the vice president-elect and her soon-to-be second gentleman are part of a rare demographic among intermarried couples – those between Black women and White men.
These marriages make up just 3 percent of all newlywed heterosexual intermarriages in the United States, according to Pew. The most notable example is of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose lawsuit against the state of Virginia led the Supreme Court to legalize interracial marriage nationally in 1967. (The largest group of newlywed intermarriages, at 42 percent, consists of Hispanics married to non-Hispanic whites).
Popular culture has since raced ahead of reality. The 1970s television show “The Jeffersons” debuted the first prime-time marriage between a Black woman and a White man: Helen and Tom Willis. (Roxie Roker, who played Helen Willis, was married to a White man in real life, Sy Kravitz, and the couple gave birth to a son, musician Lenny Kravitz.)
The past decade saw an explosion of interracial couples on television, including many on shows by African American producer Shonda Rimes. Her hit show “Scandal” featured Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, the Black risk-taking crisis manager hopelessly in love with the president of the United States, a White man.
The envelope that was pushed by “The Jeffersons” “has since been licked, sealed and delivered,” said Bob Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.
White men and Black women who marry tend to be older than their same race counterparts and are more likely to have been previously married. Emhoff and Harris, who are both 56, married in 2014, and Harris is Emhoff’s second wife.
While such couples can face some challenges related to race, they are substantially less likely to divorce by the 10th year of marriage than those in White marriages, Black marriages and marriages in which the husband is Black and the wife is White, according to a 2008 study. The reasons are unclear, but experts speculate the barriers that keep White men and Black women from marrying at higher rates may mean that those who do are especially committed.
Black women and men must contend with sexual stereotypes dating to slavery – that Black women are promiscuous (a myth created as White slaveowners were raping enslaved women) and that Black men are sexual beasts who rape vulnerable White women (used in part to keep Black men from voting and gaining power).
But the historic burdens carried by Black-White couples belie the fact that the vast majority of interracial marriages are loving and boringly normal, said Cheryl Judice, a sociologist and adjunct professor at Northwestern University. Judice, who researches interracial relationships, interviewed 50 couples for her 2018 book “Interracial Relationships Between Black Women and White Men.”
Judice said she hoped her research would persuade more Black women to consider dating and marrying outside of their race.
“Black women are the only women in this country who can’t take finding a partner within their own race for granted,” she said. Even so, they are the least likely group of women to marry outside of their race, Judice notes. Often, she said, they prefer Black men because of attraction and upbringing, a desire to keep resources within the race or to lend their support to Black men. But too frequently, the numbers don’t work in their favor.
Black women are more likely than Black men to be college-educated professionals, which can prove an obstacle to marrying, and a disproportionate number of Black men are imprisoned or unemployed. Black men are more than twice as likely as Black women to marry interracially, with 8.6% marrying outside their race. Another reason Black women may intermarry at lower rates include stereotypes that hold that Black women are less attractive and feminine than White women.
White men who marry Black women do not subscribe to such notions.
Dana Tofig met Cindy at work, typical for people in interracial marriages, Judice said. Both were journalists in their 20s, employed by the Hartford Courant. He was the night police reporter; she was a copy editor. “Not to be shallow, but I thought she was really beautiful,” Dana said.
Cindy was a quiet and a thoughtful listener, while Dana was coursing with energy and almost always up for fun. The couple had both been raised to study hard and hold themselves to high standards. They married in 1996 and have two sons, Will and Daniel, ages 17 and 14. Dana works in communications for a nonprofit organization, while Cindy, 51, is an editor at a nonprofit.
They talk about race as they navigate a country where racism remains deeply embedded.
“I I do try to check myself if I have an initial reaction” that might be based on a racial stereotype, Dana said. Cindy agrees that Dana is very self-aware, although she notes “he’s not had the experience of being followed around at the 7-Eleven because the clerk thinks that you’re going to steal something.”
In other words, he is not Black.
“Where these relationships work,” said Judice “there is a willingness to try and see life how the other person views it.”
Interracial couples are more apt to live in racially integrated neighborhoods, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Demography.
Cindy said she and her husband mostly socialize with White people, but that she nurtures relationships with her Black friends and relatives so she does not feel racially isolated.
The Liermans decided to buy a house in the famously leftie neighborhood of Takoma Park because they liked its racial and ethnic diversity. Even so, Amanda is careful to make sure that daughters, Belle, 3, and Leia, 1, are well exposed to Black culture. She ensures they spend time with Black relatives and friends, and she and Kyle keep their shelves stocked with books that have Black characters. Belle just started lessons at a Black-owned dance school. The girls’ nanny is Ethiopian.
“I want my kids to know that they’re Black and to be proud of the fact that they’re Black,” Amanda, 35, said.
Amanda and Kyle, 33, decided to raise their children to identify as Black since society will probably view them that way. Yet Amanda said she sometimes struggles to help Kyle see race the way she does. During the nation’s racial reckoning, Amanda said, “I found myself asking Kyle, are you understanding this the same way I understand it?”
She suggests articles and movies to “create opportunities for us to have some of those conversations.” As they watched the character playing Black Panther leader Bobby Seale being bound and gagged in a courtroom during “The Chicago Seven” on Netflix, Amanda said she turned to Kyle and said “Are you seeing this? This is the kind of stuff that actually happens.”
As a White man married to a Black woman, “You’re in a constant state of learning,” Kyle said, “and it’s a blessing to be able to see through your partner’s eyes and understand how they experience life differently.”
Amanda said her husband’s openheartedness was part of the attraction. They started dating two years after meeting in 2011, when he was an Obama staffer helping to run the White House Office of Public Engagement, and she held a similar role at the Department of Energy. They said they share a devotion to public service and creating a more equitable society. (They also prayed at their 2015 wedding that Biden would run for president.)
“She is just fierce,” Kyle, CEO of nonpartisan voting organization When We All Vote, said of Amanda, managing director of Supermajority, a women’s activism group. “She’s smart and strong and she didn’t put up with any of my s—.”
When Scott Cozad came upon wife Aisha’s online dating profile, he was impressed by her forthrightness.
“She seemed to know exactly what she wanted,” he said – a serious relationship for a serious woman, race unimportant. Aisha liked that Scott wasn’t intimidated by her PhD.
“He loves me for my brain,” Aisha, a senior research adviser at AARP and an adjunct professor, said half-jokingly.
Scott, who is a systems engineer for a defense contractor, said he is a “super nerd, too.” Scott had been married before and so had Aisha, whose son, Brandon, by her first husband, is now 17. The couple married in 2015 and live in a mostly White neighborhood in Woodbridge, Va.
“The things we have trouble with as a couple aren’t about race, but the ordinary things like ‘These dishes still haven’t been put up,” Aisha said. “I think that White men who genuinely fall in love with and marry Black women – I’m not talking fetishes – have a different perspective, a more open mind or self-awareness.”
The Cozads are eager to watch Harris and Emhoff live out their interracial marriage on the national stage.
Watching the way Harris and Emhoff tease each other and show affection “visually reminds me of my wife and I together,” Scott said. “It doesn’t look contrived to me. It looks very, very natural.”
Aisha agrees. “The way he looks at her reminds me of how my husband looks at me.”
By The Washington Post · Dana Hedgpeth · NATIONAL, FEATURES, ANIMALS
WASHINGTON – The National Zoo’s baby giant panda finally has a name. The cub’s name is Xiao Qi Ji, (SHIAU-chi-ji), which translates as “little miracle” in English.
The panda cub is now 3 months old. The zoo ran a contest in which the public could vote on a list of names. After five days, the zoo said nearly 135,000 votes came in, and Xiao Qi Ji was the winner. It was one of four Mandarin Chinese names that zoo officials put online for the public to pick.
In a statement Monday, zoo officials said, “giant pandas are an international symbol of endangered wildlife and hope, and Xiao Qi Ji’s birth offered the world a much-needed moment of joy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.” It added, “His name reflects the extraordinary circumstances under which he was born and celebrates the collaboration between colleagues who strive to conserve this species.”
The zoo is closed due to the pandemic, but viewers can see the baby panda on the online panda camera.
All pandas at the zoo move to China when they are 4 years old as part of the zoo’s breeding agreement with China.
By The Washington Post · Siobhán O’Grady · NATIONAL, WORLD, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT, ASIA-PACIFIC
China launched a spacecraft without a crew aboard toward a previously unexplored part of the moon Tuesday in a bid to bring back material that could help scientists better understand the satellite and planets beyond Earth.
Only the United States and the Soviet Union have successfully brought lunar material back to Earth, in missions launched several decades ago.
Chang’e-5 launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province Tuesday. The mission is named for the Chinese goddess of the moon.
The Long March-5 launch rocket carrying the Chang’e-5’s four modules – the lander, the ascent vehicle, the service capsule and the return capsule – began its fueling process Monday, Chinese state media reported.
The lander is scheduled to touch down in an area called Oceanus Procellarum and stay on the moon one lunar day – the equivalent of around two weeks on Earth.
Once there, it will attempt to dig about seven feet into the ground, then transfer the collected material to the ascender. According to NASA, the ascender will then dock with the service capsule, at which point the samples will be transferred to the return capsule. That capsule will then return to Earth, where it is expected to land in Inner Mongolia early next month. The mission’s goal is to collect about 4.5 pounds of material for research.
Jack Singal, an associate professor of physics at the University of Richmond, said that the mission, if successful, will allow scientists to directly date the rocks and volcanic activity from the collection site. Then calibrating the age to crater density, he said, could set the stage to “give us a better handle on dating rocks on the rest of the surface of the moon and other rocky bodies,” including Mercury and Mars.
The endeavor is the latest in China’s ambitious plans to expand its research in space, another rivalrous aspect of the U.S.-China relationship.
In July, China launched its Tianwen-1 mission, marking the country’s first attempt to land a rover on Mars. NASA launched a Mars mission, called Perseverance, the next week. The United Arab Emirates also launched an orbiter to Mars that month.
In January 2019, China became the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. On that mission, called Chang’e-4, the craft landed in the Von Kármán crater, in the South Pole-Aitken basin. The Chinese National Space Administration said the landing “marked a new chapter in the human race’s lunar and space exploration.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called that landing “a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment.”
China’s mission comes as NASA is pushing, under its Artemis program, to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The Trump administration had moved up NASA’s timeline from 2028 to 2024, saying it needed to move with a sense of urgency.
NASA is hoping to create a permanent presence on and around the moon by building a space station it calls Gateway that would stay in lunar orbit and be used as a way station for astronauts and cargo.
It seems unlikely, however, that NASA would be able to meet the White House’s ambitious schedule. And while it appears that under a Biden administration, NASA would maintain the Artemis program, the schedule would more closely adhere to the original 2028 date.
In the meantime, NASA is seeking to send a series of scientific missions to the lunar surface, including a rover that would hunt for water on the moon’s south pole by 2023.
China has dramatically accelerated its space missions in recent years, after first launching an astronaut into space in 2003, decades after American astronauts’ 1969 moon landing.
The latest mission, Singal said, is “an appropriate-scale mission for an emerging space power.”
The proximity of the moon, he added, means that if successful, China can “get some results and a triumph quickly.”
Hong Kong-Singapore bubble delay hits travel rebound hopes
InternationalNov 24. 2020Passengers wait for a train in the Central Station, Hong Kong, on Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chan Long Hei.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Will Davies · BUSINESS, WORLD, HEALTH, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, ASIA-PACIFIC, HEALTH-NEWS
The shelving of the keenly anticipated Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble shows just how delicate the process of reopening borders is — even for places that have largely contained the coronavirus.
The cities’ virus outbreaks are far less intense than in places such as the U.S. and Europe, but a recent uptick in cases in Hong Kong proved enough to delay the start of the air corridor between the two financial hubs by two weeks, dashing the plans of those who booked flights that were due to begin Sunday.
The bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore was heralded as a pandemic world-first, allowing people to travel to and from the two places without the need for quarantine. Authorities are reviewing a new launch date.
“This is a sober reminder that the Covid-19 virus is still with us, and even as we fight to regain our normal lives, the journey will be full of ups and downs,” Singapore Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said Saturday.
The two sides agreed that the bubble would be suspended if local infections exceeded five on a rolling seven-day average. That wasn’t even met in Hong Kong before the decision, but the recent jump in infections there was enough for authorities to apply the brakes, handing another setback to the aviation and travel industries of the two cities, which had some of the region’s busiest airports before the pandemic.
“The travel bubble will eventually be resumed, although whether it will be in two weeks’ time is hard to say as it depends on how quickly the virus situation in Hong Kong improves,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Teo said. “Even when it does happen, we should not expect plain sailing from then on.”
“Once more contact-tracing is done in Hong Kong and most cases become linked, even if new daily cases remain high, unlinked cases may start falling below five a day consistently, allowing the travel bubble to start,” Teo added.
Strict border curbs have helped Asia contain the coronavirus better than other parts of the world, with countries from China to New Zealand limiting the entry of travelers and imposing mandatory quarantines as a way of stopping the virus at their doors. But the approach — which has seen some all but eliminate Covid-19 — has come at a heavy cost, decimating tourism with cross-border travel basically paralyzed.
While in-country containment of the virus has resulted in the world’s 10 busiest domestic air travel routes now all being in Asia, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways and Singapore Airlines continue to struggle as they have no domestic travel market to fall back on.
Even if the Hong Kong-Singapore corridor opens, the boost to the two aviation hubs will be limited, said Rico Merkert, professor of transport at the University of Sydney’s business school. Singapore Airlines and Cathay will continue to struggle because they can’t funnel onto the route those travelers who would normally arrive from Europe and the U.S., he said.
“Without that feeder traffic, those bubbles will at best be limited to the local population,” Merkert said. “International travel is going to remain a tricky affair.”
Cathay had described the bubble as “a hugely encouraging development and an important first step in the return of regular international air travel to and from Hong Kong,” as well as a “milestone showcase” for other travel bubbles. Cathay’s traffic numbers for October slumped 98.6% from a year earlier to just 38,541 passengers. Singapore Airlines carried 35,500 passengers last month, down 98.2%.
“Bubbles provide a little bit of incremental additional international traffic in the interim period until the pandemic ends,” Sobie Aviation founder Brendan Sobie said on Bloomberg Television, adding that the impact of the bubble plan is mostly symbolic. A full recovery in air traffic will still take a few years, even with a vaccine, though bubbles will help get the process moving, he said.
An increase in cases in either Singapore or Hong Kong was always a risk for those who booked tickets when the bubble plan was announced on Nov. 11. It’s still possible to travel between the two cities, but a mandatory quarantine applies on both sides.
“That is the main deterrent, I have no interest in sitting in a hotel room for two weeks — it’s not healthy,” said Mungo Paterson, 42, a Briton living in Hong Kong who booked a Dec. 7 flight to Singapore shortly after the bubble plan was made public.
“I was excited when they announced it, I thought ‘here we go,'” said Paterson, who planned to go to Singapore for work and to see his sister and her family. “I’m now holding off confirming until Dec. 2. I think there’s a 50-50 chance the flight will happen.”
After a long lull with just a handful of cases a day, the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong prompted the government to impose tighter social-distancing rules and to close schools again. The city reported 68 new infections Saturday, with all but seven locally transmitted, a sign the virus is spreading in the community. To encourage people to take virus tests, the government plans to offer a payment of $645 (HK$5,000) to anyone who tests positive.
Cathay and Singapore Airlines were due to fly a return trip each on Sunday and then three or four a week until starting daily services next month. Passenger numbers were to be limited to 200 per flight. After the suspension, the carriers offered refunds or seats on non-travel bubble flights, which require passengers to undertake quarantine. The bubble would replace that with virus tests and a condition that arrivals can’t have traveled internationally in the previous 14 days.
Hong Kong and Singapore’s economies are heavily reliant on tourist and transit travel, and Transport Minister Ong has warned that the closing of borders puts Singapore’s very future at stake. The city-state has agreements with a handful of countries allowing business or essential travel under certain circumstances, but none reached the stage of the plan with Hong Kong. Singapore reported 12 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, all of them in travelers coming from overseas.
Global coronavirus infections topped 58 million over the weekend, with daily increases in the U.S. nearing 200,000, yet it took fewer than 100 local cases in Hong Kong for the bubble plan to be put on ice.
Singapore and Hong Kong have said they hope their agreement can be a model for other nations trying to open up, but the delay further clouds the outlook for anyone with ambitions for travel, not just between those two cities, but everywhere else too. Air traffic globally is expected to be at just 33% of 2019 levels at the end of this year, and “hopefully” at 50% to 60% by the end of 2021, Alexandre de Juniac, director general of the International Air Transport Association, said Friday.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks with mayors at the Queen in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 
President-elect Joe Biden speaks with mayors at the Queen in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 
Sen. Kamala Harris leans on husband Doug Emhoff after being introduced by Joe Biden as his running mate during an event in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 12, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys. 
Passengers wait for a train in the Central Station, Hong Kong, on Nov. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chan Long Hei. 
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