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Trump announces travel ban from most of Europe: U.S. stock futures immediately tumble

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Donald Trumps speech on the coronavirus was not the perfect speech. But will it help? Early signs aren’t hopeful.

Ever since President Harry Truman delivered the first televised speech from the Oval Office on Oct. 5, 1947, American Presidents have used the Oval Office speech as a speech that addressed a grave, serious, troubling, or exceptionally sad moment. It has been largely (but not always) used as a moment when a President addresses and issue and tries to heal, unify, rally, or reassure Americans and the world. Speeches are carefully prepared so there is no room for misunderstanding. Donald Trump used the Oval Office to announce his response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic. With mixed results.

The biggest news was that starting Friday the U.s. will ban travel from most of Europe to the U.S. The Washington Post:

“President Trump announced a ban on travel from most of Europe to the United States for 30 days Wednesday, marking one of the federal government’s most sweeping measures yet to contain the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

The ban will begin Friday at midnight and will not include travel from the United Kingdom, Trump said in a national address late Wednesday, in which he also announced a series of economic relief plans, including low-interest loans for affected small businesses, and called on Congress to provide “immediate payroll tax relief.”

He will also instruct the Treasury Department to defer tax payments for impacted individuals and businesses, he said.”

But minutes after the speech officials had to clarify Trump’s remarks and the stock market did not react favorably. The Huffington Post:

“In the face of a rapidly expanding global coronavirus pandemic that has already killed dozens and infected at least 1,200 within the United States, President Donald Trump delivered a strange Oval Office speech Wednesday in which he focused on banning travel from Europe, said nothing about the lack of available testing across the country, and ignored many crucial aspects of the public health crisis.

The president said he would ban noncitizens from traveling to the United States from Europe for 30 days amid the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus now declared a pandemic. The ban will apply to anyone in the European Union’s 26-country Schengen Area and those who have traveled there in the past 14 days. It begins Friday.

The president initially said all travel would be suspended from Europe but later clarified that the ban would exempt Americans, permanent residents and their families, although such travelers could be subject to additional screening at ports of entry. Trump also clarified, amid confusion over his remarks, that the ban did not apply to trade with Europe, only “people.”

It seemed the stock market was not entirely pleased, Reuters reports:

“U.S. stock index futures tumbled on Thursday and were close to hitting their daily down limit after President Donald Trump’s speech outlining the administration’s response to the coronavirus epidemic disappointed investors.

S&P 500 ESc1 futures fell as much as 4.7% to 2,610 points, near the daily downlimit of 2,601 points.

“The market is not applauding the president’s address,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark.”

New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait:

“Guiding the United States through a pandemic would be a difficult task for any president under any circumstance. The challenge has grown more forbidding by barriers decades in the making — the skeletal social safety net, with its patchy access to health-care and pressure placed on sick workers to keep earning money — as well as President Trump’s decision to dismantle the White House pandemic response team.

The most basic necessity for grappling with the coronavirus is understanding how pandemics work. And Trump revealed in his Oval Office speech that he does not comprehend the most basic facts.

Trump’s speech had no mention of the central problem in the American response to the coronavirus, which is the lack of a functioning testing regime. Having falsely promised on Friday that everybody who currently wants a test can get one, Trump simply ignored the question altogether. At the moment, people who have symptoms do not know what they can do about it. The number is due to explode, and Trump offered them no guidance.”

And:

“Perhaps most astonishingly, the White House had to retract two policy announcements that Trump erroneously made either because he failed to read his text properly, or his speechwriters failed to describe his position. Trump announced his European travel ban would apply to “trade and cargo,” before the White House announced this was an error. Trump also told his audience, “I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments and to prevent surprise medical billing.” The Insurance Industry quickly announced it had only agreed to cover testing, not treatment, for the coronavirus.

The cliche about Trump’s presidency is that it is malevolence tempered by incompetence. His haplessness would undermine his corruption and authoritarianism. But now, finally, the country faces a crisis in which Trump’s incompetence will not save us from him. His wholesale unfitness was on bright display from the Oval Office. It may be the most unsettling moment yet of this bleak era.”

Political Wire:

“President Trump referred to the novel coronavirus as a “foreign virus” in his Oval Office address on Wednesday night, CNN reports.

“The characterization of the global pandemic as a foreign virus aligns with how some Trump allies have described the coronavirus in recent days, which critics have called xenophobic.””

This all came on a day when Reuters reported that the White House told federal health agency to classify coronavirus deliberations.

Heck of a job, Donald.