Politico | Coronavirus: Trump faces ‘black swan’ threat to economy and re-election
- Trump’s allies acknowledge the deadly coronavirus could present an existential political threat for the president in an election year
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Dan Diamond and Nancy Cook on politico.com on February 24, 2020.
Stock markets tumbled around the world. The number of coronavirus cases mushroomed in advanced nations like Italy, Japan and South Korea. And travel bans expanded as leaders confronted the nightmarish prospect of a spreading virus swallowing their nations.
US President Donald Trump’s top aides faced an increasingly urgent threat Monday with potentially monumental implications: a global outbreak knocking down the US economy and walloping markets in an election year, all against accusations about whether the Trump administration had mismanaged and underfunded a critical response with American lives on the line.
A swift drop in the stock market – the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,000 points, its largest slide in two years – jolted officials in the White House and across Washington, delivering implications from the long-simmering coronavirus threat to a wider swathe of Americans.
“The view in the White House is that this is one of those classic black swan events, and all we can do is control the health issues in the US,” said Stephen Moore, an informal economic adviser to the Trump team.
The still-mysterious coronavirus – which is hard to detect, poses high risk to the elderly and may in some cases be transmitted by people who show no symptoms – has infected more than 80,0000 people abroad, although only 53 people now in the United States are confirmed to have contracted the virus, almost entirely overseas.
“Trump’s re-election effort is so closely tied to the strength of the stock market and the economy,” said Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and 2016 Trump campaign adviser. “Anything that shakes us off of that pro-growth track is a concern, but I think the view of officials in the White House is that this will be contained.”