Pedestrians walk along a side street near Times Square in New York, the US, March 21, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

 A painful US recession is looming on the heels of the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s failure to respond promptly. And, the administration’s economic policies are part of the reason why the US economy is so exposed, Chinese economists said on Friday.

A record 6.65 million people filed for unemployment benefits in the US last week, reflecting how the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic could cripple the US economy.
The number doubled from 3.3 million claims filed just a week ago. First-time claims for unemployment benefits surged more than 3,000% since early March, according to CNN.

Chinese economists said a US recession has already arrived, and this has much to do with the economic policy heralded by US President Donald Trump, which touts “America First” and anti-globalization.

“Trump’s relentless trade war with China and other economies and negligence at looking at the real structural problems of the US economy has squandered the opportunity to fix the economy," Hu Qimu, a senior fellow at the Sinosteel Economic Research Institute, told the Global Times on Friday.

"Content with a bubbled prosperity of the US economy while ignoring the underlying problems, Trump’s economic team now is directly exposed to the indiscriminate onslaught of the pandemic," said Hu.

“Till today, Trump’s trade policy is still focused on political correctness, deflecting the administration’s responsibility. Its trade war and measures to curb high-tech exports will continue to burden its large enterprises, which are now entering a semi-shutdown state,” said Tian Yun, vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association. 

Facing an exploding health crisis at home, senior US officials are mulling new hurdles for stopping US companies from selling certain high-tech products such as semiconductors to China’s Huawei, according to media reports.

"Economic globalization is irreversible. Global economies are highly intertwined,” Hu added. “Only win-win cooperation under a multilateral framework can achieve common prosperity."

Due to the nature of the US economy as a service-based one, the 6.6 million jobless claims are sure to be just the tip of the iceberg, said Tian. 

“And as services are based on interaction among people, it can be expected that it will take the US economy much longer to get back on its feet, compared with China’s manufacturing-based economy,” Tian said.

Current US economic policies, like the Fed's recent monetary stimulus, will not be able to address the perils faced by the US economy, Tian told the Global Times on Friday.

Goldman Sachs says the jobless rates in the US could peak at 15 percent, with GDP plunging by a record 34 percent in the second quarter of 2020.

The wave of unemployment will not be temporary and its impact will be felt for two or more years, Zhou Xuezhi, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

However, Zhou noted that Trump’s economic policies do not lack supporters within the US, so it is unlikely that Trump will reshape US economic policies because of the pandemic.

Having gone through a strict nationwide lockdown, China has largely kept the pandemic under control and is now on track to restart business operation nationwide.

China’s surveyed unemployment rate reached a high of 6.2 percent in February, up from January’s 5.3 percent.

With the resumption of work steadily moving forward, China’s jobless rate will improve during the second half of the year, an official with the National Bureau of Statistics said at a press conference on March 16.