Trump has claimed that China’s handling of the pandemic is proof that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose his re-election bid in November and told Reuters he was considering different forms of retaliation.
The Washington Post reported that high-level meetings were under way in the White House to discuss options, including suing for compensation, which would involve stripping China of “sovereign immunity” or cancelling debt obligations to China. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has repeatedly suggested that the coronavirus could have come from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, after cables surfaced from early 2018 in which US diplomats expressed concern about safety standards at the facility.
