President Joe Biden’s plans to ship 80 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the developing world, coupled with US support for waiving vaccine intellectual property protections, are much-needed humanitarian initiatives. They will save lives and, in the short run, boost US soft power which suffered greatly during the Donald Trump era.
But such headline-grabbing efforts are no substitute for a more comprehensive, ongoing commitment to help the world recover from the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse. And that means America becoming what Biden has called the world’s ‘arsenal of vaccines’ while still continuing to fuel the global economic recovery through more spending and US imports.
Both of those initiatives certainly pose a more difficult domestic challenge for the new administration than distributing surplus vaccines – but a failure to follow through on such efforts will threaten global recovery and further undermine US soft power.
The Trump White House did its best to rip out the foundations of goodwill towards America around the world. Favourable views of the US fell in ten of 17 key nations between 2016 and 2019, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. And the American people understand this all too well with only 53 per cent of Americans now believing foreigners have a favourable view of the US, down from 73 per cent in 2000, according to a Gallup poll.
Vaccine diplomacy alone is not enough
The Biden administration’s challenge is to repair America’s soft power, and vaccine diplomacy will help but only goes so far. History suggests goodwill can be rented but it cannot be bought. In 2011, in the aftermath of the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami in Japan, massive US rescue assistance boosted American favourability among the Japanese public by 19 points but this positive sentiment fell back to its previous baseline in subsequent years. When Washington rushed to aid Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, America’s image there rose 23 points only to then slide back in subsequent years.
To be sustained, a country’s positive image must be constantly nurtured, and distributing 80 million vaccine doses will not be enough. If a large proportion of the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are to be protected, most of that vaccine has to be manufactured in the US where supply already exceeds demand.
US production needs to be ramped up further, especially in sourcing the much-needed raw materials and equipment for the vaccine through an aggressive use of the Defense Production Act which enables the government to prioritize manufacturing efforts.
But a bigger challenge may be convincing the American people to share this vaccine with the world. Half the American public believes the US should not donate vaccines to other countries and stockpile them at home in case they are needed. So the White House must use its ‘bully pulpit’ to engage the public in a discussion about why such hoarding would be self-defeating as it allows the virus freedom to mutate into more dangerous variants.
The same polling does suggest there is public sentiment the administration can work with because half of those surveyed also say the US should begin to share vaccines to achieve global herd immunity. In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt called on Americans to be ‘the arsenal of democracy’, a memory Biden is now alluding to. The White House needs to revive that spirit of selfless commitment to the greater good that, at the same time, boosts Americans’ pride in their country.
Sustaining the global economic recovery is likely to prove more difficult. The $1.9 trillion US fiscal stimulus already enacted and the $4.1 trillion in new spending that the Biden administration has proposed far outstrips the economic ‘pump priming’ by other nations, and the US spending to date has already boosted global economic recovery. But that momentum must be sustained.
This poses a political problem for the Biden White House because the core Democratic support is wary of trade. In March 2021, US goods and services trade deficit was up 64 per cent from the same period in 2020 as exports decreased 3.5 per cent and imports increased 8.5 per cent. More government stimulus is likely to suck in even more imports, worsening the deficit in the short run.
Protecting US jobs is paramount
In the medium-term, strong US growth will spur recovery abroad, increasing demand for US exports, and easing – although not erasing – that deficit. But short-term pain for long-term benefit is a tough message for a Biden administration to sell when three-quarters of middle-class voters say protecting US jobs should be the top foreign policy priority.
Being the first-choice marketplace for much of the world has long been one of America’s great diplomatic advantages, but China’s rise in global public esteem coincided with its growing demand for raw materials and unfinished goods from the rest of the world. Pre-COVID, a majority in emerging markets saw China’s economy as a good thing for their country with this sentiment dramatically rising between 2017 and 2019 in countries as disparate as Mexico, South Africa, and the Philippines.
If the US is to revive its image and rebuild its soft power both absolutely and relative to China, it must reassert and sustain its role as a driving force in the global economy – and that means politically unpopular trade deficits at home for the foreseeable future.
Convincing the public of the diplomatic value of this will take a frank, politically painful discussion, backed by a convincing use of stimulus spending to create new jobs in those US industries not threatened by foreign competition. This is already the Biden economic plan, with its focus on social and physical infrastructure. Passing that legislation is critical – not only to the US and the world’s economic recovery but also to the revival of America’s soft power.