The Washington Post - 11.03.2020

wednesday, march 11 , 2020. the washington post eZ re a25

WEDNESDAY Opinion

M

r. President: Lock us up! Please. This is a dangerous invita- tion to a man whose authori- tarian tendencies are well known and who made a similar phrase a staple of his 2016 campaign. But for a guy who likes to play the strongman and who ad- mires them around the world, President Trump’s e fforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus have been, to coin a phrase, low-energy. The country has two to three weeks to avert a catastrophe, public health ex- perts say, by imposing severe restric- tions on crowds and movement before the deadly virus spreads out of control at a level that will overwhelm hospitals and drive up the number of deaths before a vaccine can be developed. States, localities and private businesses are moving quickly to keep people from congregating at offices and schools, on mass transit and at public and private gatherings. Austin canceled South by Southwest. Boston canceled its St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Several univer- sities are switching to online studies. New York declared a containment zone in Westchester County, closing schools, businesses and places of worship and calling in the National Guard to deliver food. Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders both canceled campaign rallies. And Trump? Instead of using the bul- ly pulpit to reinforce these critical efforts to slow the spread of the virus: His White House reportedly rejected a request from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to advise the el- derly and those with underlying medi- cal conditions not to fly on commercial airlines. He rejected the idea that he would cancel his own mass campaign rallies, saying, “It’s very safe.” He bristles at the idea of shutting down any activities. On Monday, he tweeted that tens of thousands of Amer- icans die from the flu, yet “Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.” Instead of championing the urgent need for social distancing, Trump on Tuesday shared a tweet suggesting his border wall would protect Americans from the “China virus.” He is variously congratulating himself and reassuring Americans that the virus is under c ontrol. “It will go away, just stay calm,” he said Tuesday. His nonchalance is contagious. A R euters-Ipsos poll found that Demo- crats are about twice as likely as Repub- licans to say the virus poses an immi- nent threat to the United States. More Democrats than Republicans said they were washing their hands more often because of the virus, and more Demo- crats than Republicans said they had changed their travel plans. Trump has always been more con- cerned about his own interests than the national interest. To the extent he’s con- cerned about the coronavirus, it’s that it might hurt him. In Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman reports that Trump told aides “he’s afraid journalists will try to pur- posefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One.” Trump is also said to have “asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar any- one who has a cough from the White House grounds.” But “in terms of shutting stuff down, his position is: ‘No, I’m not going to do it,’ ” one “former West Wing official” told Sherman. In this case, Trump’s instinct for self- preservation is misguiding him. Tr ump thinks shutting down business, or transportation, or gatherings, will hurt the economy. It will — but not as much as it will if he doesn’t take dramatic ac- tion now. Badgering “our pathetic, slow moving Federal Reserve,” as Trump called it on Tuesday, won’t help. Nor will fiscal stim- ulus such as tax cuts — though provid- ing workers with paid sick leave could be crucial. What will help the economy is protecting Americans from the virus that is causing them to hunker down. British scientists, in the Lancet this week, write that 60 percent of the world population would become infected with the virus without attempts at slowing its spread. By contrast, with social distancing, the transmission rate could be re- duced by 60 percent, as happened in China, and the spread kept in check. Let’s leave aside the humanitarian consideration of lives saved and look at it strictly as Tr ump would from the per- spective of self-interest. He wants to be reelected. Therefore, he wants markets to rally and employment to grow. There’s no call for (or possibility of ) a China-style crackdown. But if Trump puts the weight of the presidency behind efforts to slow the spread of the virus through social distancing, the economy would continue to take a short- term hit, but has a chance of recovering by, say, Nov. 3. If he continues on his current path, he could well have a Wu- han situation on his hands, resulting in an overwhelmed health-care system, an unimaginable death toll and an economy in ruins — just in time for Election Day. If not for us, Mr. President, do it for yourself. Twitter: @Milbank

dana MiLBanK WasHington sketCH

Mr. President,

lock us up!

C

hina wages its campaign for global influence stealthily, partly by winning control of little-known but influential U.N. agencies. The State Department decided last summer to push back hard — and just won a potentially important victory in protecting global technology rights. The U.S. diplomatic success came last Wednesday, when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) voted 55 to 28 to back a U.S.-supported candidate, Daren Ta ng of Singapore, over China’s nominee, Wang Binying. The Chinese com- plained that the Americans pressured other countries to endorse the U.S. choice, and they were right. The WIPO vote is an encouraging sign that the Trump administration is taking a more active, forward-leaning role in international organizations, rather than cede the ground to the Chinese. These organizations are especially important now, when the world is facing global problems such as the novel coronavirus and climate change. Administration officials say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was peeved last June when China’s Qu Dongyu w as elected director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization by a lopsided majority of its 191 members. China’s win at the FAO followed the 2018 reelection of its candidate Houlin Zhao as secretary general of the International Te lecommunication Union and the 2018 reappointment of Fang Liu, a veteran of China’s civil aviation bureaucracy, to head the International Civil Aviation Organization. WIPO and the other agencies may sound like obscure bureaucratic outposts, but they help shape standards and rules for global commerce. WIPO logs 250,000 pat- ent applications every year, including more than 55,000 from the United States, and it’s supposed to keep them secret for 18 months until they’re published. The director general “exercises control over every aspect of WIPO’s operations,” a ccord- ing to James Pooley, a former WIPO deputy director general. What was especially galling to U.S. officials was that China, which the FBI views as the leading thief of intellectual property, would be guarding the secrets. Pompeo said in congratulating Ta ng that his victory was “good for the world” and would “ad- vance WIPO’s core mission” of protecting technology innovation and property r ights. Beating China at the global influence game isn’t easy. It requires the diplomatic equivalent of basic blocking and tackling. Last year, State began mobilizing support to resist China’s WIPO candidate. “We know states received a combination of threats and promises of inducements” from Beijing, a senior State Department official said. U.S. ambassadors pushed back by lobby- ing governments around the world, enlist- ing key allies Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Australia to resist the Chinese campaign. Two senior diplomats traveled to Africa and Latin America to urge countries there to move away from regional candidates in the second round of voting. Starting in January, Pompeo personally met or called top officials from 28 countries about the issue. For a State Department that was bruised by tension between career diplomats and political appointees during the long Ukraine investigation, the WIPO fight was a welcome chance to pull in the same direction. “This campaign showed the building working together,” s aid Undersec- retary David Hale, the top career official at the department, in an interview. “It’s been years since we beat the Chinese at something like this,” said one close Pompeo adviser. This official credited “real- ly damned good work by our career Foreign Service officers” for the WIPO win, a sentiment you don’t always hear from this administration. The next big global diplomatic test will be Internet governance. Russia, with Chi- nese backing, won approval from the U.N. G eneral Assembly in late December to write a new cybercrime treaty to replace the U.S.-backed Budapest Convention, even though many analysts view Russia as a menace in cyberspace. The State Department initially seemed to be caught napping on the treaty v ote, but the senior official said the administration recognizes that “Russia is interested in undermining” the existing cybersecurity regime. “We are coordinating with international partners to ensure that any treaty negotiation is fair, constructive and strives towards greater consensus on global efforts to fight cybercrime,” t he official explained. The global coronavirus panic reminds us why a U.S.-led “rules-based order” is so important. Without global cooperation, it’s impossible to coordinate efforts to contain and mitigate disease, intellectual property theft or anything else. An “A merica First” approach that relies only on sovereignty is doomed to fail. The Chinese have been skillful in playing the international card. As Washington stepped back from engage- ment, Beijing stepped forward. The Trump administration could have taken a pass on WIPO — let t he Chinese win the election and then resign from the organization in protest. In that case, “the worst offender would be in charge” of protecting technology, said the senior official. It’s good the administration decided instead to stand and fight. Twitter: @IgnatiusPost

david ignatius

U.S. diplomats

stood up

to China

BY SHELDON WHITEHOUSE AND JAMES SLEVIN

O

ne of us is a labor leader from a union whose members are hard at work in all facets of energy generation, from coal- fired and nuclear power plants to natural gas and renewable energy systems. The other represents a coast- al state at grave risk because of climate change. We have come together in an unusual but badly need- ed alliance to argue for a path forward to address the twin threats of a changing climate and growing economic inequality. That path forward includes imposing a price on carbon — not the usual position for the leader of a union whose members work in the energy industry. Indeed, this represents the first time an energy-sector union has announced support for a carbon price. The path forward also features a new, and newly respectful, way of talking about the men and women who took on the difficult and dangerous tasks of producing such fuels for our economy — not the usual rhetoric from environmentalists who have too often dismissed the contributions of these workers and diminished the threat to their livelihoods. There should not be, and does not need to be, a trade-off between protecting our planet from destruction and supporting workers who have spent their livelihoods in carbon- i ntensive industries that also sustain the economy. The answer is imposing a price on carbon and using the revenue in a way that helps workers, families and communities. Pricing carbon is the most power- ful and efficient way to reduce carbon pollution. Charging big corporations

a price for their carbon emissions — as many other countries around the world already do — would generate abundant revenue to provide economic security for coal workers, their families and the communities they call home. A price on carbon makes the transition period to lower-emitting energy sources less harsh than it would be under raw and sudden market conditions; miners and power-plant workers will be less at risk. In other words, a carbon price could mean the differ- ence between a controlled descent and a steep crash. By way of example, carbon-capture technology could offset emissions and extend the safe operating life of fossil plants and fossil fuels. Putting a market price on carbon will provide an incentive to develop that technology, transforming carbon dioxide into a useful commodity rather than a waste product. However, it is not enough just to manage an orderly transition and to rebate carbon-fee revenue to consum- ers, as is commonly proposed. It is also important to honor the workers who mined the coal and operated and maintained the power plants that built the America we have today. For much of the past century, coal gener- ated more than half of the electricity that powered our modern lives. We Americans have all enjoyed the economic wealth and power built by these women and men. How to best honor them? First, we should honor the promises made to them about their pensions and health plans. To o many plans have been left underfunded or broke after compa- nies abandoned their commitments. We should use revenue from the carbon price to make those pensions and health plans whole, and make workers eligible for these benefits

whenever plants close. What about something similar to a GI Bill college benefit for these workers and for their children? With a carbon price, we can afford it, and we could show our appreciation and respect in a tangible way. We could fund the economic rede- velopment of towns and counties that depended on mines or power plants. It is important that we provide not only workers, but also the communities they call home, the opportunity to remain vibrant places where families live and work — not municipal tomb- stones abandoned to cold market forces. Think of it this way: These men and women undertook the difficult and dangerous jobs that made Ameri- ca great. Look at them as our energy veterans; they won the world war for economic dominance and powered the American Century. As new tech- nologies take hold, and we power into a new American Century, they must not be left behind. In our divided country, a sad and unnecessary part of our national climate conversation is its failure to respect the economic value our e nergy veterans created. To o many good people feel abandoned and dis- respected. There is a simple human proposition that hard and successful work deserves appreciation and fair treatment. Let’s honor that p roposition. A carbon price represents the best answer to our climate danger. It also makes it affordable to do the right thing and help bind our country together. We should seize that chance.

sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, represents rhode island in the U.s. senate. James slevin is president of the Utility Workers Union of america.

The best answer

to our climate danger

mark Wilson/getty images Emissions spew from a large stack at the coal-fired Brandon Shores Power Plant near Baltimore in March 2018.

BY MICHELLE HERRERA MULLIGAN

W

hen it was released in Janu- ary, Jeanine Cummins’s novel “American Dirt” was pro- moted as a socially important examination of the border crisis — until critics and authors began to dissect Cummins’s inauthentic portrayal of Mexican society and her obsessive focus on the trauma of migrants. As a result, the novel’s s ocial significance now comes from the conversations about why she and the book got so hyped in the first place: Who gets to write about underrep- resented people? How much are these stories worth? How can we promote them responsibly? It’s a good thing that these questions are now standard where they once were rare. B ut as an editor a nd author who has worked in magazine and b ook publishing for m ore than 20 years, this moment feels somewhat anticlimactic. It’s important that figures such as Oprah Winfrey are hosting the discussions, as she did after facing criticism for choosing “A merican Dirt” for her bestseller-generating book club. But we already know what has to change for the publishing industry to hire and retain editors of color and make sure great writers get the book deals and the attention they deserve. A recent Lee & Low Books survey of publishing industry professionals found that only 6 percent of people who work in publishing identify as Latinx. One major barrier to entry is p ublishing-industry salaries. Depending on the national salary aggregator you

look at, editorial assistant jobs, the typi- cal entry point to an editing career, pay an average of $36,534 or $43,761. It’s almost impossible to live on that salary in New York, where many publishing industry jobs are concentrated, without outside financial help. That poses a significant obstacle to some aspiring Latino or Latina editors and other job applicants of color. And getting in the door is just the start. Editors of color are often pulled in multiple directions or forced into no-win scenarios. To your colleagues you’re often cast in the role of advocate and ambassador. Being one of the few Latina editors in this industry is a lonely, complicated endeavor. I’ve had to fight to prove that books that don’t have easily identified comparative titles in the industry can still be profitable. I also cannot count the number of times I’ve had to explain that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and don’t identify as “immigrants,” or that the majority of Latino people living in the United States were born here. To Latin communities, you’re cast as either a resource or a politician. You’re under constant evaluation — judged as either lifting up your communities or being a sellout. What some advocates don’t under- stand is that for Latina editors already working in the field, the “conversation” on race and representation in publishing houses is not taking place on the terms we set and may be uncomfortable and exhausting for us. We are doing what we can, in addition to our jobs.

That dynamic has been particularly painful during the conversations about “A merican Dirt.” S ome of the writers who appeared at Winfrey’s town hall have been called “whitetinas” or “vendidas,” meaning sellouts, on social media just for agreeing to appear on the show or to engage with Cummins. The reality is that those of us repre- senting our communities in publishing will never fulfill any of these roles ade- quately enough for some outsiders. Most of our time is spent attempting to serve, and make visible, a reader who has been ignored by this industry for decades. Changing the salary structure and culture in publishing will take time, as will winning the trust of underserved communities. But as the conversations that drive these shifts take place, there are simple steps that all of us inside and outside publishing can do to make things easier for writers and editors of color. If you are a publisher, stop asking Latina and other editors of color wheth- er their ideas will appeal to a “book- b uying audience”; people of color are a book-buying audience. If you are an advocate, start promoting specific, re- cently published books by people of color on your social media at l east once a week, rather than simply waiting to tear down a problematic book by a white author. We need to make sure the great books we all say we want can find the audiences they deserve.

michelle Herrera mulligan is an author and a senior editor at atria Books.

How book publishers can help

writers and editors of color

The Washington Post - 11.03.2020

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