Donald Trump ’s Travel Ban Piles More Economic Pain on Europe

With a global pandemic comes global pain. That became clear on Wednesday night after President Donald Trump abruptly imposed stringent 30-day travel restrictions between the U.S. and much of Europe—ones that could threaten the West’s core ties, cut deeply into trade, and ravage the travel and tourism industries. Labeling COVID-19 a “foreign virus,” Trump said in an Oval Office address that non-U.S. citizens who had been in the 26 European countries that make up the Schengen border-free zone in the past two weeks would not be allowed to enter the U.S. after midnight Friday. Europe has seen a total of about 22,100 cases of the virus, over half of them in Italy alone, where the death toll has surpassed 1,000. Blindsided by Trump’s announcement, the European Union’s two top leaders, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel, said the U.S. President’s travel ban was “taken unilaterally and without consultation,” and complicated solutions needed to contain the virus. “The coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent,” they said in a statement. “It requires cooperation rather than unilateral action.” Hours after Trump’s announcement, the stampede of Americans out of Europe was well underway. They included hundreds of young students attending Spring semester programs on the continent, and who spent Thursday scrambling to book plane tickets home, an...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature Londontime Source Type: news