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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says China’s coronavirus ‘will help’ bring jobs back to U.S.
By Rachel Siegel
Jan. 30, 2020 at 11:46 a.m. EST
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Chinese coronavirus — which has killed 170 in China and infected more than 7,700 people — could “help” to bring jobs to the United States because companies will be moving operations away from impacted areas.
During an appearance Thursday morning on Fox Business, Ross said that he didn’t “want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” and expressed sympathy for the victims. But he said the pneumonia-like virus would be a consideration for American businesses that are scrambling to determine how the outbreak will affect their supply chains. He pointed to the 2003 SARS epidemic, the “African swine virus” and now coronavirus as “another risk factor that people need to take into account.”
“I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America, some to [the] U.S., probably some to Mexico as well,” Ross said. He then said Apple was “talking about figuring out how to replace some of the Chinese production.” Apple had plans to assemble some phones and computers outside China before the coronavirus outbreak.
“I think there’s a confluence of factors that will make it very, very likely more reshoring to the U.S. and some reshoring to Mexico,” Ross said.
The White House has been pressuring companies in China to move operations to the United States. President Trump recently signed a partial trade deal with China meant to create new incentives for U.S. companies.
But public health experts were quick to criticize Ross’s comments as inaccurate and dangerous, saying such messaging could suppress reports of new infections. Meanwhile, health officials are up against the spread of false information on social media, from conspiracy theories to deceitful claims of magical cures. And Facebook, Google and Twitter are scrambling to crack down on the spread of dangerous health disinformation.
Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that American companies would have more reason to be concerned about gun violence or measles outbreaks stateside “in terms of actual risk to their health than coronavirus.”
“You have somebody of that stature who makes an irresponsible comment, speaking on matters in which he has no expertise, and there’s no scientific or historical evidence to what he’s saying,” Benjamin said of Ross.
“With this kind of new disease, you want as much openness as you can,” Benjamin added. “If you suppress that openness, which this will do, then you absolutely make it worse and more people will get sick, and more people will die.”
Sandro Galea, dean of the School of Public Health at Boston University, said infectious diseases “threaten all of us” and that there’s never a positive consequence from an outbreak. Ross’s comments “rest on a misunderstanding of how infectious diseases are transmitted,” Galea said.
There’s a “responsibility that public officials have to communicate in an informed manner that educates the public and moves us towards an understanding of what actually generates help,” Galea said. “A comment like this achieves the exact opposite purpose.”
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