The Trump administration has announced a plan to stop Chinese airlines from flying to or from the U.S. beginning in June 16. This comes after the Chinese government has prevented United and Delta Air Lines from restarting their own services to China.
The Chinese are currently limiting airlines to service levels based on frequency in late March, when U.S. carriers had already suspended Chinese operations. The Chinese government has offered one flight per week.
Of course aviation is just a pawn in a broader tiff between the two global powers. The U.S. accurately claims China wasn’t fully forthcoming as the SARS-CoV-2 virus began to spread internationally, though greater candor earlier (perhaps 10 days) wouldn’t have altered the course of the virus for a country unprepared to deal with it – that limited access to testing, limited health care providers to using only faulty tests, and which ignored offers by American manufacturers to scale up production of respirator masks.
China has used the cover of the crisis to tighten its grip on Hong Kong. The U.S. has placed restrictions on Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
I’m tempted to say that the Trump administration is Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles holding a gun to his own head, thinking the Chinese are the townspeople of Rock Ridge.
Little played Sheriff Bart in the 1974 Mel Brooks classic. The townspeople were going after the newly-appointed sheriff, but backed off when they thought he was going to shoot himself.
By banning Chinese airlines from flying to or from the U.S., because China is banning U.S. airlines from flying to or from the U.S., we’re doing nothing but holding a gun to our own head. By the way the virus is under control in China, we need to re-start global commerce, and we need greater access to the supply chain out of Asia. (Not that the flying experience to China right now is anything I’d want to be a part of.)
However Little’s Sheriff Bart was the shrewdest character in the film, and he was just manipulating the townspeople. He was never going to pull the trigger. Unfortunately I don’t think the Trump administration is faking, or if they are they may be locking themselves into a tit-for-tat they can’t back down from, which winds up wounding the U.S. regardless of how much it also wounds the Chinese. This isn’t zero sum, each side’s moves leave both sides worse off.
Maybe this, then, is the more apropos Blazing Saddles meme?
Good. Why would we allow Chinese airlines full access to this country when they won’t reciprocate? Pretty much sums up our relationship with them for the last 30 years.
Demand for the US to China flight is high but limited to Chinese nationals only, due to China’s current coronavirus immigration policies. (This includes thousands of students stranded here for the summer.) Demand for the China to US flight is low because most Americans already left China when the outbreak was raging there, and if not, during the anti-foreigner sentiment that arose afterward. (Entry to the USA from China has been limited to US citizens and green-card holders.) So suspension of all flights affects primarily Chinese nationals. Not sure how this shows how Trump is holding a gun to his own head.
Also, you state that the USA had “limited access to testing, limited health care providers to using only faulty tests, and which ignored offers by American manufacturers to scale up production of respirator masks.” Wouldn’t earlier notification of the nature of the virus by China allow the USA to earlier scale up production of tests and respirators, catch manufacturing defects in the tests, and also instill broader travel bans and other quarantine measures?
Under this plan, is CX considered a Chinese airline?
@Paul That was my question as well…..
As I understand it from the press release:
“As of June 16, 2020, the United States Department of Transportation will order the suspension of all scheduled passenger flights of Chinese airlines to and from the United States. This is specific to airlines in mainland China, so wouldn’t apply to airlines based in Hong Kong or Taiwan…”
So Cathay, Eva, and China Airlines continue as normal and I assume US carriers to HKG & Taiwan.
Trump is doing the right thing
” The U.S. accurately claims China wasn’t fully forthcoming as the SARS-CoV-2 virus began to spread internationally, though greater candor earlier (perhaps 10 days) wouldn’t have altered the course of the virus for a country unprepared to deal with it – that limited access to testing, limited health care providers to using only faulty tests, and which ignored offers by American manufacturers to scale up production of respirator masks.”
So you are clairvoyant now? I am not clairvoyant, but I would think it reasonable to expect that 10 days earlier warning would have saved lives. And SARS-CoV-2 lives matter, especially since more blacks have died at the hands of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 than in the hands of the Minneapolis police. If you are clairvoyant, you ought to know who was ranked number 22 on the Fortune Magazine list of ‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’ in 2017 and called “a leadership role model.” If you are not clairvoyant, then read up on Janee Harteau and why she was asked to resign after her officers shot an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911 for help with a sexual assault. The Minneapolis police have a problem and it is not whether black lives matter, but whether any lives matter in Minneapolis.
If there is anyone out there that has the ear of the orange man in charge, please please tell him that Hong Kong is not a part of China and that Hong Kong is not limiting flights in a way that has to be reciprocated. I suspect that trump couldn’t begin to find Hong Kong on a map, probably couldn’t even find china, so please somebody let him know.
The reactions show how uninformed many of your readers are. The only exception is commentator Reason above. Two points immediately show this:
The restrictions by China on flights are applied to ALL airlines not just US airlines. It was strictly as a measure against imported covid cases. The people complaining about this are nearly all Chinese students who want to go back for summer. They are frustrated to find that they can’t book Air China, China Southern, China Eastern Airlines because they all are restricted.
2. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapre, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, …all suppressed covid with much lower fatality rate in spite of this “China cover-up”. Gary is absolutely correct. Even when Bay Area governments such as San Francisco and Santa Clara county issued serious warnings, Trump still said there was no problem and CDC said risk in US is low. That was already in February.
Trump is very dependable – you can count on him to always do the wrong and stupidest thing.
Reason and Bill I agree with you both! Earlier notification would have helped all of us?? And not letting the virus out of the WUHAN lab would have been even better!!!!We should cut them off-for flights and who knows if it is contained in China they cannot seem to tell the truth and be TRUSTED!!!
China is finally starting to see the backlash globally. Blockade China from free countries, stop doing business with them and then a true revolution will take place.
What’s with the dissent re blocking Red China airlines from entering our country? If the junior kiddies of CCP political and military leadership cannot fly directly home to their gulag, let them fetch an OAG and book thru Canada or Mexico.
I just wonder that with all the venom expressed here against Trump, are these the same apologists for Red China ransacking our economic success by stealing blueprints, ignoring copyrights, ordering their students here to grab whatever they can; poisoning our population and forcing us to shutter our economy?
Realizing their mistaken judgement, they are probably the same voices falsely claiming now how they always warned us about such industrial thefts, re-engineering, and the attacks against our economy. I would guess they come from the same families who saw nothing wrong with Ford, GM, Coke Cola, etc. running their operations in Nazi Germany up to and into our entry into WWII.
American industry must be led back to the US and more secure supply chains; not worry about flights/access to the PRC. We are out of the desert and should see clearly how Red China has manipulated its Wuhan Virus to poison western nations and destroy their economies. Doing so has enabled Red China to project itself against Hong Kong; threaten Taiwan; to illegally fortify the South China Sea barren rock islands; to attack area fishing boats; to align with the hostile mullahs of Iran.
The position of the U.S. must be clear–all action in the future must be reciprocal, starting with our airlines. Actually, this must now include flights from Hong Kong flights, now that the “Red Dragon” has stolen Hong Kong’s freedom.
From the DOT, per WaPo:
“In establishing an arbitrary ‘baseline’ date of March 12, 2020, as well as the other restrictions cited above, the CAAC Notice effectively precludes U.S. carriers from reinstating scheduled passenger flights to and from China and operating to the full extent of their bilateral rights.”
“Should the [Civil Aviation Authority of China] adjust its policies to bring about the necessary improved situation for U.S. carriers, the Department is fully prepared to revisit the action it has announced in this order.”
That seems pretty fair and logical to me. And in the meantime, Chinese carriers will be able to fly to the United States as frequently as US passenger airlines can fly to China — which is not at all.
The timing was perfect, on the eve of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
China has not repented and still has not shared all the necessary and appropriate documents regarding the outbreak of COVID-19 in China.
China will lie, obfuscate, and dissemble until end days about COVID. As any historian of China will tell you the Communist government has done since the revolution in 1949.
It was therefore a necessary public-health measure to ban those flights. Full stop.
And I say that as a lifelong Democrat and hope to hell the Democrats wake up from their slumber about the hideous and ghastly threat to public health, national security, and domestic stability the Chinese government has posed in just 3 long months — not to mention in the 31 years since Tiananmen!
From the DOT per the Post:
““In establishing an arbitrary ‘baseline’ date of March 12, 2020, as well as the other restrictions cited above, the CAAC Notice effectively precludes U.S. carriers from reinstating scheduled passenger flights to and from China and operating to the full extent of their bilateral rights.”
“Should the [Civil Aviation Authority of China] adjust its policies to bring about the necessary improved situation for U.S. carriers, the Department is fully prepared to revisit the action it has announced in this order.”
Seems pretty reasonable and logical to me. In the meantime, Chinese passenger airlines will be able to fly to the United States as frequently as U.S. passenger airlines can fly to China — which is not at all.
@Gary – Looks like China caved and agreed to allow the US airlines to fly. Are you going to update this story, admit you were wrong, and that Trump was right?
@Joe – I have an update note tomorrow. China did NOT cave, that’s being totally misrepresented, they are offering what they offered *back on May 25* before the Administration threatened to ban their flights.
https://viewfromthewing.com/u-s-airlines-are-now-pawns-in-the-presidents-re-election-saber-rattling-against-china/
“For now China wants to permit U.S. carriers to each operate just one flight per week to the country. The opening gambit is no flights, because U.S. airlines weren’t operating China flights in mid-March, but they would agree to one flight since Chinese airlines are only being permitted to fly once a week by their regulator.”