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Trump Administration Restricts Entry Into U.S. From China Trump Administration Restricts Entry Into U.S. From China
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will put into place temporary travel restrictions that will bar entry into the United States by any foreign national who has traveled to China in the past 14 days, administration officials announced on Friday. Moving to counter the spreading coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration said Friday that it would bar entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China and put some American travelers under a quarantine as it declared a rare public health emergency.
The temporary restrictions, a reaction to the novel coronavirus that was deemed a public health emergency by the World Health Organization, will be put into place at 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2. The United States on Friday also declared the coronavirus, which has sickened more than 9,700 people in Asia and has spread to the United States and 20 other countries, a public heath emergency. The temporary restrictions followed announcements by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines that they would suspend air service between the United States and China for several months.
The action will restrict all foreign nationals who have been to China — other than immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents — from entering the United States. The travel disruption sent shocks through the stock market and rattled industries that depend on the flow of goods and people between the world’s two largest economies. Planning was upended for companies across a vast global supply chain, from Apple to John Deere, the tractor company.
In addition, officials said, any American citizen returning to the United States from the Hubei Province in China will be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine, and any American citizen returning to the country who has visited the rest of mainland China within the past 14 days will undergo proactive entry health screening at selective ports of entry, as well as 14 days of self-quarantine. The S&P 500 suffered its worst loss since October, falling 1.8 percent, as the spread of the virus — and the increasingly urgent efforts by companies and governments to contain it — fanned fears of an economic slowdown.
Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, is in Hubei. The government travel restrictions, which will take effect on Sunday evening, were announced by Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, who declared that the coronavirus posed “a public health emergency in the United States.”
Administration officials did not say how long the “temporary” measures would be in place. The administration’s action will restrict all foreign nationals who have been to China in the past 14 days from entering the United States. The restriction does not include immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents. Nearly three million Chinese residents traveled to the United States in 2018, according to federal data based on travel records.
But they said the United States will also funnel all flights from China to just a few airports, including John F. Kennedy International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare, Los Angeles International Airport and San Francisco International Airport. The travel restrictions and the airline’s announcements showed how rapidly concerns about the virus have escalated into a grave test of the global economy, for which there is no recent precedent. Three weeks after the first virus-related death was reported, China has found itself increasingly cut off from its biggest trading partner, the United States, and many other nations.
The travel restrictions were announced Friday by Alex Azar, the health secretary, who declared that the coronavirus posed “a public health emergency in the United States.” Chinese officials said on Saturday that there had been an additional 46 deaths in the country, the most so far in a 24-hour period, raising the death toll to 259. It said confirmed infections had grown to nearly 12,000, from 1,300 a week earlier.
Mr. Azar and other members of an administration task force assembled to address the virus sought to play down public fears about an outbreak“The risk at this time to the American public is low,” said Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This is a serious health situation in China, but I want to emphasize the risk to the American public currently is low. Our goal is to do all we can do to keep it that way.” About 100 cases have been confirmed across 21 other countries, including at seven reported cases in the United States. Russia, Italy and Britain each reported their first infections on Friday, two from each country. The four patients in Italy and Russia were Chinese citizens, the authorities there said; Britain did not release any details.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the actions were being taken because there were “a lot of unknowns” surrounding the virus and its transmission path. Unlike influenza, which is fairly predictable in terms of infection and mortality, Dr. Fauci said there was not the same certainty about the transmission rate and path of the coronavirus. To address the outbreak, China has extended the Lunar New Year holiday, which was to have ended Thursday, into next week. In cities across the country, including those far from the center of the outbreak, there were eerie scenes Friday of all-but-empty streets and highways, closed shops, trains without passengers and nearly deserted public spaces that are normally packed.
The slowdown in activity has raised fears that essential supplies, including food, will run short, which the government insists it will not allow to happen.
And it is unclear when China’s economic engine — a huge producer of both consumer goods and industrial components — might return to anything resembling normal.
Many companies said they were relatively well positioned for the disruption, thanks in part to the recent easing of the trade tensions between China and the United States. Faced with the threat of tariffs, many companies — particularly retailers — had stocked up on imports from China, or found suppliers in other parts of Asia.
But if the restrictions in China are kept in place for many months and the virus keeps spreading, profits will suffer.
Forsake, a footwear company based in Boston, has most of its supply chain and production facility in Zhongshan in southeastern China. The company received its spring orders before the annual holiday closing and is stocked through July. After that, said Sam Barstow, the president and chief operating officer, who knows?
“We don’t really know what we’re planning for,” Mr. Barstow said.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said on an earnings call this week that many of its suppliers’ factories in China would remain closed until Feb. 10.
Apple had closed one retail store in China, and said traffic into its stores across China had decreased in recent days. Apple is frequently “deep cleaning” its stores and regularly checking the temperature of its employees there, Mr. Cook said.
The airlines are also braced for prolonged turmoil. American said all of its flights between the United States and mainland China were being suspended immediately, through March 27.
United and Delta said their flights on those routes would be suspended by next Thursday. United said it expected to resume operations on March 28, while Delta said its suspension would last through April 30. The three airlines accounted for more than a third of all travel between China and the United States in 2018.
In 2018, more than 8.5 million passengers traveled between the United States and China, according to data from the United States Transportation Department. Most flew on a handful of Chinese airlines, none of which immediately responded to requests for comment Friday on any plans to halt or modify service.
The coronavirus has already sickened more people than the outbreak of the SARS virus did in the eight-month outbreak of 2002 and 2003.
The SARS outbreak coincided with a relatively brief slowdown of global growth in early 2003, which was followed by a sharp rebound.
SARS, however, is an imperfect comparison because at the time China represented just 5 percent of the global economy. In 2019, China accounted for about 18 percent, according to JPMorgan Chase economists.
“The much larger role of China in the global economy versus 2003 implies much greater global spillover risks,” the bank wrote in a research note on Friday.
On Wednesday, the JPMorgan Chase economists cut their forecast for Chinese economic growth sharply for the first quarter to incorporate the impact of the virus. They now expect that the Chinese economy will grow at an annualized rate of 4.9 percent in the first quarter, down from the 6.3 percent pace they previously predicted.
The new forecasts reflect the expectation of sharp decelerations in retail sales, industrial production and business investment. But the forecast also calls for a strong rebound in economic activity in the second quarter, as the impact of the outbreak dissipates.
Concerns about global growth have pushed the benchmark American oil price below $52 a barrel, from more than $60 at the start of the year, and have sent the shares of energy companies lower. Tech stocks have also suffered, with particular weakness in the semiconductor sector, which is closely linked to supply chains based in and around China.
On Thursday, the State Department raised its travel advisory to Level 4 — “Do not travel” — a rating reserved for situations in which the government expects to have very limited ability to help citizens abroad. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency because of the spreading virus, though it opposed restrictions on travel or trade with China.
Mr. Azar, the United States health secretary, and other members of a Trump administration task force emphasized on Friday that the current risk to the American public from the coronavirus was low.
But the drastic travel restriction suggested that the risks in the United States could grow quickly and unpredictably.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a Washington briefing that the actions were being taken because there were “a lot of unknowns” surrounding the virus and its transmission path. Unlike influenza, which is fairly predictable in terms of infection and mortality, Dr. Fauci said there was not the same certainty about the rate and path of the coronavirus transmission.
“The number of cases have steeply inclined with every day,” Dr. Fauci said.“The number of cases have steeply inclined with every day,” Dr. Fauci said.
The administration’s announcement came as major air carriers said they were suspending flights between the United States and mainland China. In addition to the restrictions on foreign nationals traveling from China, the United States will begin funnel all flights from China to just a few airports, including Kennedy International in New York, O’Hare in Chicago and San Francisco International.
Administration officials said the president’s action did not constitute a travel ban, since immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents would still be allowed into the country. Officials said any American citizen returning to the United States from the Hubei Province in China, where the outbreak is centered, would be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine. Any American returning to the country who has visited the rest of mainland China within the last 14 days will undergo proactive entry health screening at selective ports of entry.
“There is no travel ban,” said Joel Szabat, an assistant secretary at the Department of Transportation. The government also imposed a two-week quarantine on 195 people who were evacuated on Wednesday from Wuhan, China, to a California military base.
Administration officials have been debating internally over the past few days about whether instituting travel restrictions would be seen as an alarmist reaction to a virus that so far has affected only a handful of people in the United States. And Mr. Trump had expressed concerns about the economic impact of any restriction or ban, according to people familiar with his thinking. Some public health and policy experts said the restrictions announced Friday, weeks after the virus was discovered in China, might not do as much officials hoped in containing the contagion.
Members of the National Security Council had argued in favor of the travel restrictions, given the rapid spread of the virus and a backlog in testing at the C.D.C. At this point, sharply curtailing air travel to and from China is more of an emotional or political reaction, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Despite the administration’s efforts to minimize the actions they announced, lawmakers in Congress who had been pushing Mr. Trump to impose a travel ban said the measures announced on Friday were significant and had their full support. “The cow’s already out of the barn,” he said, ”and we’re now talking about shutting the barn door.”
“By imposing temporary travel restrictions on China, the president has taken decisive action to protect Americans against the Wuhan coronavirus,” said Republican Senator Tom Cotton, from Arkansas, who has been aggressively pushing the administration to impose a targeted travel ban. Reporting was contributed by Matt Phillips, Patricia Cohen, Niraj Chokshi, Jack Nicas, Knvul Sheikh, Russell Goldman, Chris Buckley, Elaine Yu, Richard C. Paddock, Richard Perez-Peña, Elisabetta Povoledo and Jason Horowitz.
The American airline industry separately took steps to restrict travel between the United States and China. The announcement by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines that direct air service would be halted for months sent shocks through the stock market and rattled industries that depend on the flow of goods and people between the world’s largest economies.
The airlines’ move underscored the seriousness of the health crisis, fanning new fears about a worldwide economic downturn and contributing to growing unease about how widely, deeply and quickly the virus might spread.
Mr. Azar said the administration was not trying to raise alarms but that Americans should view its actions as a sign that their government was “taking responsible steps to protect them.”