Drawbridges up: lockdowns and covid-19

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Primaries in three American states yesterday put Joe Biden in an even clearer lead for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was to be four states, Ohio postponed. We take a look at the campaigns and how the pandemic is affecting them. And there's a particularly prized beef from Japan called Wagyu. It's got imitators elsewhere, but its fans say only the original will do. Now the Japanese government wants to protect it by outlawing the traffic in eggs and sperm from wagyu breeds. But first, Around the world, governments are shutting down their countries to stop the spread of coronavirus in America. After a confused initial response, President Donald Trump advised the entire country to stay at home.

My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people. Avoid discretionary travel, and avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and public food courts.

Britain's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson came under fire for his government's delay in implementing social distancing measures.

It looks as though we're now approaching the fast growth part of the upward curve. And without drastic action, cases could double every five or six days in France.

Yesterday, new measures were put into place confining people to their homes for at least 15 days except for essential purposes. People can now be fined if they're found in public.

Outside on the streets, things are much quieter.

Sophie Petter is our Paris bureau chief.

There are some cars, there are some people, but each of them could be stopped at any moment. It is a shock. And the punitive measures are severe in principle. We'll see how they're applied in practice, but at least they're having the effect that the government wanted to which its much more permissive regime was not.

Meanwhile, the European Union has essentially closed the borders of its 27 member states for 30 days. And in Italy, the first European country to institute a lockdown, authorities are still struggling to get ahead of the virus.

The health care system in Italy is under great pressure.

John Hooper is our Italy and Vatican correspondent.

But it is a localized pressure. That's to say in Lombardy, particularly the region around Milan, there is a full blown crisis. They really are very close to the limit already and we're still clearly not at the peak of the infection of the contagion.

In Italy, restrictions and border closings are proliferating. Suggestions to stay home are turning into mandates. But as governments struggle with their own country's shifting situations, confusion reigns as to which measures are best to take and when. Up until now, the world has been lacking a coordinated response.

As time goes on, the approaches appear to be getting a lot more similar.

Simon Long is a senior editor at the Economist.

And that involves, well, extensive lockdowns, that is asking people to avoid social contact, to avoid big gatherings, to stay out of bars and restaurants, to close public institutions like universities and in many countries, schools. These measures are all becoming fairly widespread now. Internationally it means controlling borders. And more and more countries are imposing limits on the people who can come into their countries, which, whether from neighbouring countries or by air, and are basically barring people from countries with significant infection outbreaks. So we are now seeing considerable commonalities in approach. There have been differences up till now, and it's been hard to tell often whether that is because countries have thought that they were simply at a different stage of the outbreak. In places like Britain, for example, where it said, well, we're several weeks behind places in the continent like Italy which have a lot more serious outbreaks, whether it's just a matter of time and that they were always planning to do the same or that they've actually changed their approach.

But there had been a lot of.

Discussion around the response of America and Britain in particular, which seems to be diverging from the rest of the world and to a degree still is.

What's your take on that?

I think there have been two big differences between the way that the US And UK have approached this and the rest of the world. One is in testing that both countries have been relatively slow to test large numbers of people. Partly that is in the case of America, because they certainly didn't have enough testing kits. They were badly mismanaged the way testing was going to be done. And so they really had a very poor, poor handle on how many people out there were affected. The other one was that both countries were far slower to impose restrictions on social contact, to impose social distancing measures across the country. And in America, it has gone state by state. So some states were far ahead of others. Until just a couple of days ago, Donald Trump was saying that there are states which don't have any infections at all and they don't really need to do very much. So that approach has been, I think, criticized widely overseas and has been seen as a cause of a worsening outbreak in the US which nobody yet really knows how bad it is at all.

And what about the notion of international cooperation? If there is this realization that there is in some sense a universal curve that each country is riding up in terms of how it's weathering the pandemic, what sense do you get that the countries are realizing they're pretty much all in the same boat and should align policy?

Well, there's some sense of that. On Monday, the G7 group of countries leaders all put out a joint statement, basically pledging to do whatever it takes to defeat the virus and to improve coordination and help and so on. But in fact, if you look more closely at it, it's very much every country for itself. A lot of countries have imposed export bans on medical supplies to ensure that their own governments aren't short of things like ventilators and masks that they will desper need themselves. And we're seeing a particularly damaging row between the two most powerful countries in the world, America and China. They're bickering, in a sense, about where the virus came from. China strongly objects to it being called, as Donald Trump did again on Monday, the Chinese virus, and is in a way taking the fight to the US it's even getting behind a sort of extraordinary, ridiculous online conspiracy theory that it was the American military that developed this virus and brought it to China in the first place, which I don't think many people seriously believe. But there have been official Chinese spokesmen who have spouted this line. So all of that is playing into a generally deteriorating relationship between the two big powers, which yesterday saw China expel or propose to expel journalists from three major US News outlets from China.

A lot of countries do seem to.

Be making the same kind of financial monetary moves. Is that a matter of coordination or just each country realizing that the prescription is pretty much the same?

It's a bit of both. I think that there's an effort both by central banks to coordinate their action because they have little option but to, in this case, follow the lead of the Federal Reserve as the central bank of the world's leading economy. There's also a certain amount of coordination, but also a lot of we're all in this on our own about fiscal policy, where government after government is announcing big spending packages to try and keep their economies going. So there's a certain amount of coordination. There's not yet anything like the degree we saw in the financial crisis of 2008, where the G20 pledged basically to do whatever it takes to rescue the world economy. But that may be coming as the world begins to realize that it's facing such an enormous crisis and that in terms of policy coordination, there's not nearly enough at the international level.

Simon, thanks for joining us.

Thanks very much for having me, Jason.

With COVID 19 dominating the headlines all over the world, it's easy to forget that in America, an election year is playing out. Yesterday, there were big moves in the race for the Democratic nomination. Former Vice President Joe Biden won primaries in Illinois, Arizona, and the crown jewel of battleground states, Florida.

Today, it looks like once again, our campaign has had a very good night. We've moved closer to securing the Democratic Party's nomination for president. And we're doing it by building a broad coalition that we need to win in November.

Last night's wins add to the slew of delegates Mr. Biden secured during Super Tuesday's primaries earlier this month. The talk has long been what kind of lead would be insurmountable for Mr. Biden's rival, Bernie Sanders. That is when Mr. Sanders would exit the race. But after a thumping loss last night, the senator didn't make a single public comment about his defeat.

The Florida primary was really a test for both candidates. It was a simpler test for Joe Biden. He just had to show that he could build on his momentum, and he clearly passed that test. He won by a wide margin.

John Fasman is our Washington correspondent.

Sanders had a much tougher road demographically it clearly did not play to his strengths. It's older, and he does much better with younger voters. 16% of its population is African American, and African Americans overwhelmingly prefer Joe Biden. And while Sanders has done pretty well with Latino voters, Florida's Latino population is heavily Cuban. And Sanders praise of Fidel Castro's literacy efforts, which, you know, depending on your point of view, were either admirably principled or politically insane, hasn't endeared him to that population. So Sanders was probably never going to win Florida, but his test was to avoid being blown out, and he failed it. He did not win one single county in Florida in 2016. He won nine. And Joe Biden appears to have netted enough delegates out of Florida to wipe out all the delegates that Sanders has netted from the states that he's won.

And with that wipeout, where does that leave us with the campaigns of the two front runners?

Well, Joe Biden won the two biggest states last night convincingly. He won Florida, and he won Illinois. And those victories let him continue his pivot toward the general election. In his short speech last night, he said that while he and Senator Sanders disagree on tactics, they share a common vision.

So let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders, I hear you. I know what's at stake. I know what we have to do. Our goal as a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party and then to unify the nation.

His surrogates have been reaching out to supporters of Senator Sanders and other progressives. And he's also made some pivots on policy. Earlier this week, he endorsed Elizabeth Warren's ambitious plans for bankruptcy reform, and he backed making public universities tuition free for most students. Now, he and his surrogates have been really careful not to publicly pressure Senator Sanders to drop out. And that's smart. Sanders and his supporters are hypersensitive to anything that smacks of establishment pressure. You know, but the math is the math. And with Biden racking up a functionally unmatchable delegate lead, the rationale for Sanders staying in the race. Asking the teachers and other working people whose small dollar donations have fueled his rise to keep sending in money makes less and less sense, particularly when voting in primaries. You know, standing in lines with other people, touching the same screens and door handles that they do carry some significant health. So, you know, nobody has ever lost money betting that Bernie Sanders would abandon a politically lonely path. But to a lot of Democrats this morning, Bernie's path looks not just Lonely but dangerous.

Well, about that. I mean, Florida is known for its large population of the elderly who are more at risk. How was the vote yesterday affected by the coronavirus and responses to it?

I have to say turnout in Florida was pretty light. A lot of polling locations were changed at short notice. You know, you can't have long lines at nursing homes or assisted living facilities. Polling places in all the states that voted yesterday, I think were fully stocked with hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Florida and Illinois both had problems with too few poll workers. And in Illinois at least, they had to limit the number of voting booths to make sure people were kept at a safe distance from each other.

And Ohio was the one state that chose yesterday not to push ahead with its primary. What do you make of that?

Yeah, that's quite a story. Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who has really been quite proactive in responding to the crisis and canceled the primary late Monday night. And Ohio Supreme Court really in the wee hours of Tuesday morning around 1 or 2, I think, rejected a challenge of that ruling. So in person voting didn't happen, even though I think around one quarter of Ohioans had already cast ballots. Governor DeWine said that in person voting will happen on June 2nd and absentee voting will be allowed until then. And this decision makes sense in my view from a public health perspective, you know, but the question, of course is what happens if America is still locked.

Down by June 2 and other states are following suit? How do you think that'll impact the race?

Yeah, some are. Ohio aside, four states have pushed back their primaries. Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and Kentucky. And Wyoming suspended its in person caucuses. And you know, between that and the debacle at the Iowa caucus earlier this year, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw caucuses go the way of the telegraph for states that don't postpone their in person voting. I think one risk, there may be fewer older people who want to stand in crowded lines for hours. And that may help Senator Sanders at the margins, you know, given how much better he does with younger people. But I doubt enough to reverse his fortunes.

And how do you think campaigns will continue to need to change as the pandemic continues to play out?

Well, the big change is there hasn't really been any campaigning in the traditional sense. You know, no rallies, no speeches, no cheering crowds. And I think you'll see that continue for the next couple of months and maybe even for the rest of the campaign. You know, even if there's a relaxing of some of the more stringent shelter in place orders. Joe Biden is 77, Sanders is 78, President Trump is 74. They're still in an at risk group. And I think, I hope one big change will be less to campaigning than to voting. Senators Ron Wyden and Amy Klobuchar want to include expanded vote by mail options in the coronavirus stimulus package. Now, maybe that passes, maybe it doesn't, but I'd hope you'll see states boosting other options like absentee voting, early voting, curbside ballot drop offs, these other things that reduce the amount of time people have to spend in long, crowded lines.

And what do you think all of this coronavirus response does for Mr. Trump's chances politically? Is there a clear winner or loser from this crisis in an election year?

Well, we are a long way from November. And on the one hand, you know, if the economic effects of the virus prove as grim as they look like they're going to be, I would be very nervous about being an incumbent president. But on the other, if the administration, despite its slow start, manages to get the disease under control and the stimulus that's gonna send out helps blunt the worst economic effects, voters may reward him. You know, voters gave Barack Obama a second term despite the Great Recession, and they gave George W. Bush another term despite the attacks of 9 11. So a pivot to competence might serve the president well.

And before you go, the pandemic is clearly impacting more than just the election year in the states. What else are you covering this week on Checks and Balance, the podcast to do about American politics.

Yeah. On Checks and Balance this week, we are looking at how the American healthcare system is holding up as the virus spreads. We're going to look into testing and into hospital readiness. I've been talking to the mayor of New Rochelle, which has the biggest cluster of coronavirus cases in America, and to the executive of Westchester county, where New Rochelle is located. We'll also talk to the former CDC boss, Tom Frieden, and you will be able to hear that next weekend and you will probably have plenty of time at home to listen.

John, thanks very much for your time.

Jason, always good to be with you. Be well.

Wagyu beef is known for its intricate fat marbling, leading to particularly tender meat and particularly high prices. It's as costly for one steak as a cashmere sweater. In Japan, it's considered a national treasure and one that the government increasingly wants to protect.

So earlier this year, in January, Japan's Farm Ministry proposed a new law to criminalize the smuggling of Wagyu eggs and sperm.

Miki Kobayashi reports on Japan for the Economist and is based in Tokyo.

So if this bill passes the Parliament, smugglers could end up spending 10 years in jail or pay a fine of up to 10 million yen or. Or about US$100,000. And court injections could also be requested if genetic materials are used for breeding purposes overseas.

But it seems like they're getting very, very serious when what we're only talking about here is cow eggs, cow sperm.

Yes, it absolutely is. But Japanese officials actually argue that the penalty is perfectly justified. Most farmers also support the new law to limit the export of Wagyu DNA for them. For these farmers, the most important factor in getting that perfectly marbled meat is none other than genetics.

So that being the case, I mean.

Wagyu beef has been popular for really some time. Why the sudden imposition then, of these extremely strict rules?

Well, the biggest reason why these rules are being put in place now is that Japanese Wagyu is gaining popularity among foodies across the globe. So Wagyu exports from Japan are rising extremely fast. The country shipped almost 4,500 tons of Wagyu last year, which was almost 30 billion yen, or about US$300 million, and that is about 3.5 times the volume and value exported just five years ago. And this demand for Wagyu is rising primarily as Asia is becoming wealthier. So rich foodies, for example, in Hong Kong and Thailand, they're paying ridiculous prices for wagyu. But the biggest importer, surprisingly, is Cambodia. But analysts say that Cambodians themselves aren't actually eating Japanese Wagyu. They think that much of the beef imported from Japan into Cambodia are re exported to China. And the Chinese love Wagyu. There are many people that can afford the premium beef. But the country actually has been banning Japanese beef since 2001, when Mad Cow disease erupted in Japan.

So you reckon this trend will continue?

So exports of Japanese wagyu are expected to keep on growing. First, because America eased restrictions on beef imports from Japan under the bilateral trade deal that went into effect in January of this year. And second, because the Japanese government is also very, very keen to double its Wagyu production. They're planning to offer money and incentives for farmers to breed more cows, and they're even upgrading meat processing facilities across the country.

And so do you think these new rules about the smuggling of eggs and sperm will have the intended effect, will keep the Wagyu pure, as it were?

Well, to a certain extent, because people actually do smuggle wagyu jeans across borders. And until recently, they have been semi successful. In 2018, two Japanese men were actually caught smuggling more than 100 samples of Wagyu DNA into Shanghai and China. And the new measures, a lot of analysts, a lot of researchers, they think that it's come a little too late. So Australia, for example, began mixing Japanese Wagyu jeans with local herds in the late 1980s, and its Wagyu farms since then have been thriving. So Australia already exports about seven times more than the amount Japan sells abroad. So it's unclear if the new law would allow Japan to monopolize Wagyu production or if the bill would actually make any impact on the global Wagyu market. And unfortunately, average consumers like myself, we can't really tell the difference between Japanese and foreign Wagyu.

And have you tried it?

Can you tell the difference?

Yes. So, actually, I come from a prefecture called Mie, and we produce one of the top three Wagyu's in Japan. So I have tasted it, but you.

Can'T tell it from the sort of the hybrid stuff. Stuff, the. The bastardized stuff.

No, absolutely not. And I talked to a few people, a few officials, and I asked them whether they can tell the difference, and they said, not really. They're all really good. Off the record.

Mickey, thank you very much for.

For tackling this meaty topic with us.

Thank you, Jason. Foreign.

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