As Lebanon strains to contain COVID-19, it is not clear which governmental public health policies apply to refugees. The government announced free testing for coronavirus in the public Rafiq Hariri University Hospital in Beirut but has not mentioned if refugees are eligible.

Lebanon’s coronavirus containment strategy is based on self-reporting and, given incidents of forced deportation and harassment of Syrian refugees from both the authorities and local communities, it is certainly less likely refugees would present themselves to the health authorities for fear of deportation.

Despite agreeing a Lebanon Crisis Response Plan with the UN for refugees, different ministries were left to implement it without coordination, just as Lebanese politicians from all sides started trying to rally popular support for ridding Lebanon from refugees - in particular from Syria, who Lebanese leaders say are causing a strain on the country’s already weak infrastructure.

This finger pointing is coupled with the leaders’ own complete disregard for the rampant corruption and lack of accountability within Lebanon’s political class, which contribute to the weakening of the country’s infrastructure.

For refugees who do find themselves back in Syria, there are different challenges according to which area they are in. In the north-east, the WHO and international NGOs (INGOs) negotiate with both Kurdish authorities as well as the government - each presenting its own hurdles.

Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria have closed the Semalka border with Iraqi Kurdistan, posing a serious dilemma for INGOs offering services in north-east Syria but concerned about their staff safety whose movement is now curtailed.

The government of Syria has stipulated all emergency response must go through its ministries. But this limits what the WHO can do in the country and gives Syrian authorities the ability to block ‘cross-line aid’ which goes from government-controlled to non-government areas.

Despite reports that doctors raised the alarm about suspected cases well before patient zero was confirmed, the government appears to be either covering up the actual extent of the spread of COVID-19 or failing to respond. Some limited testing kits have arrived but testing has barely started.

The WHO’s Syria plan is divided into three regions (north-west, north-east, and areas under government control). But concerns remain as to how workable such a decentralized plan is because of the government’s practices. In January, the UN Security Council did not renew the cross-border response resolution for the Yaroubiye border crossing between Syria and Iraq that the WHO was using to send medical supplies into north-east Syria.

Syrian authorities do not permit recently authorized ‘cross-line’ responders to engage with non-government authorities in areas outside regime control. This essentially voids the authorization to work cross-line as it is practically impossible to implement programs. The WHO has sought approval from the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to move medical supplies by land to north-east Syria.

While promising facilitation, the Ministry’s reply comes with conditions of seeking detailed approval for every shipment. When Eastern Ghouta was under siege, similar conditions led to certain supplies being removed from UN/ICRC convoys to Eastern Ghouta, and there is no guarantee this will not happen again.

Due to lack of capacity in north-east Syria, coronavirus tests conducted by the WHO there must be processed through the Central Public Health Laboratory in Damascus. Samples are transported twice a week from Qamishli to Damascus but no results were ever received from Damascus for those tests.

While the WHO is able to coordinate access to north-west Syria with the Turkish authorities, the prospective coronavirus testing capacity in the Idlib region is low – despite claims that thousands of kits are arriving, a lack of resource on the ground means potentially only 20 tests per day could be done in an area inhabited by an estimated three million people.

Following the recently announced ceasefire in the area, many internally displaced people are returning from the Turkish border to their homes in the north-west, but such mass movement increases the risk of coronavirus spreading. People also continue to move between Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon, posing a challenge to the WHO’s COVID-19 response in the Levant, as the WHO has distinct response plans for each country in the region and it is difficult to coordinate across these plans.

Challenges face refugees even if they head towards Europe due to the potential for conflation between migration control and coronavirus outbreak control. Aurelie Ponthieu, Coordinator for Forced Migration at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says there is a risk some countries could use COVID-19 to impose draconian measures towards asylum seekers.

The crisis has also put a halt to search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean because European countries are not allowing boats carrying migrants to disembark under the pretext of limiting the spread of coronavirus. And for migrants who already made it - such as in Greece - they are now being put in collective quarantines in asylum centers, often with poor medical facilities.

Ponthieu also reports that migrants being quarantined on overcrowded navy ships docked in Greek ports, making social distancing impossible. And she is concerned the Greek authorities are imposing a curfew on asylum seekers but not on the local population.

UNHCR is stressing that people’s right of asylum must not be overruled by concerns about the spread of coronavirus, while local and international NGOs across the Levant are trying to coordinate their advocacy on lifting restrictions on freedom of movement for humanitarian workers and on other policies and practices by authorities in the region which are adversely affecting refugee and other vulnerable communities.

The international community must not lose sight of the impact of the crisis on refugees and migrants. It is not enough simply to supply humanitarian and medical assistance without paying attention to the policies and practices of the different authorities who have direct control over the fate of vulnerable communities.

The author would like to thank Aurelie Ponthieu and the two INGO field workers who all agreed to be interviewed to inform this analysis piece.

The event will be livestreamed on the MENA Programme Facebook page.

Climate and environmental issues have largely been marginalized in discussions about the Middle East and North Africa region and yet are critical to peace and security. In this webinar, experts will explore mounting pressures including those related to water (reduced, less reliable and more polluted sources), extreme temperatures, air pollution, land degradation and sea-level rise. Panelists will discuss the potential impact of worsening environmental conditions and what the region's governments can do to protect the health and livelihoods of their peoples.

This webinar is part of the Chatham House MENA Programme's Online Event Series and will be held on the record.

Iraq is a country already in turmoil, suffering fallout from the major military escalation between the US and Iran, mass protests calling for an end to the post-2003 political system, and a violent government crackdown killing more than 600 and wounding almost 30,000 - all presided over by a fragmented political elite unable to agree upon a new prime minister following Adil abd al-Mehdi’s resignation back in November.

COVID-19 introduces yet another threat to the fragile political order, as the virus exposes Iraq’s ineffective public health system dismantled through decades of conflict, corruption and poor governance.

Iraqi doctors are making every effort to prepare for the worst-case scenario, but they do so with huge structural challenges. The Ministry of Health lacks enough ICU beds, human resources, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Bogged down in bureaucracy, the ministry is struggling to process procurements of equipment and medications, and some doctors have made purchases themselves.

But individual efforts can only go so far as many Iraqi doctors are concerned the official numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases do not reflect the complexity of the situation on the ground.

The ministry relies predominately upon patients self-presenting at designated public hospitals and has only just begun community-based testing in areas of suspected clusters. Reliance on self-presentation requires a level of trust between citizens and state institutions, which is at a historic low. This gap in trust – 17 years in the making – puts Iraq’s COVID-19 response particularly at risk.

Iraq’s myriad vulnerabilities

Certain social and political factors leave Iraq uniquely exposed to the coronavirus. The country’s vulnerability is tied directly to its social, religious and economic interconnections with Iran, an epicenter of the pandemic.

Exchanges between Iran and Iraq are concentrated in two regions, with strong cross-border links between Iraqi and Iranian Kurds in the north-east, and Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims in the south. Cross-border circulation of religious pilgrims is particularly concerning, as they can result in mass ritual gatherings.

The high number of confirmed cases in the southern and northern peripheries of the country puts a spotlight on Iraq's failure in managing healthcare. The post-2003 government has failed to either rebuild a robust centralized healthcare system, or to pave the way for a federalized model.

Caught in an ambiguous middle between a centralized and federalized model, coordination across provinces and hospitals during the coronavirus crisis has neither reflected strong management from Baghdad nor robust ownership at the governorate level.

This problem is part of a wider challenge of managing centre-periphery relations and federalism, which since 2003 has not worked effectively. Baghdad has provided all 18 provinces with instructions on testing and treatment, but only a handful have enough resources to put them into practice. Advanced testing capacity is limited to the five provinces with WHO-approved centers, with the remaining 13 sending swabs to Baghdad.

But the greatest challenge to Iraq’s COVID-19 response is the dramatic deterioration of state-society relations. Studies reveal a profound societal distrust of Iraq’s public healthcare institutions, due to corruption and militarization of medical institutions. Numerous videos have recently circulated of families refusing to turn over sick members - particularly women - to medical teams visiting households with confirmed or suspected cases.

As medical anthropologist Omar Dewachi notes, the ‘moral economy of quarantine’ in Iraq is heavily shaped by a history of war and its impact on the relationship between people and the state. Although local and international media often interpret this reluctance to undergo quarantine as a matter of social or tribal norms, distrusting the state leads many families to refuse quarantine because they believe it resembles a form of arrest.

The management of coronavirus relies upon an overt convergence between medical institutions and security forces as the federal police collaborate with the Ministry of Health to impose curfews and enforce quarantine. This means that, troublingly, the same security establishment which violently cracked down on protesters and civil society activists is now the teeth behind Iraq’s COVID-19 response.

Without trust between society and the political class, civil society organizations and protest movements have directed their organizational structure towards awareness-raising across Iraq. Key religious authorities such as Grand Ayatollah Sistani have called for compliance to the curfew and mobilized charitable institutions.

However, such efforts will not be enough to make up for the lack of governance at the level of the state. In the short-term, Iraq’s medical professionals and institutions are in dire need of technical and financial support. In the long-term, COVID-19 is a lesson that Iraq’s once robust public healthcare system needs serious investment and reform.

COVID-19 may prove to be another catalyst challenging the ‘muddle through’ logic of the Iraqi political elite. International actors have largely been complicit in this logic, directing aid and technical support towards security forces and political allies in the interest of short-term stability, and neglecting institutions which Iraqis rely on for health, education, and well-being.

The response to the crisis requires cooperation and buy-in of a population neglected by 17 years of failed governance. This is a seminal event that may push the country to the brink, exposing and stirring underlying tensions in state-society relations.

This analysis was produced as part of the Iraq Initiative.

The leaked record of the five meetings of the UK–US Trade & Investment Working Group held in 2017–18 has led to a controversy in the UK election campaign around the claim that ‘the NHS is up for sale’.

But a careful reading of the leaked documents reveals how remarkably little concerns the NHS – in five meetings over 16 months, the NHS is mentioned just four times. The patent regime and how it affects medicines is discussed in more depth but largely in terms of the participants trying to understand each other’s systems and perspectives. For the most part, the discussions were overwhelmingly about everything else a trade deal would cover other than healthcare – matters such as subsidies, rules of origin and customs facilitation.

But this does not mean there will be no impact on Britain’s health service. There are three main concerns about the possible implications of a US–UK trade deal after Brexit – a negotiation that will of course only take place if the UK remains outside the EU customs union and single market and also does not reach a trade agreement with the EU that proves incompatible with US negotiating objectives.

One concern is that the US aim of securing ‘full market access for US products’, expressed in the US negotiating objectives, will affect the ability of NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) to prevent the NHS from procuring products that are deemed too expensive in relation to their benefits. It could also affect the ability of the NHS to negotiate with companies to secure price reductions as, for instance, happened recently with Orkambi, a cystic fibrosis drug.

A peculiarity of the main US government healthcare programme (Medicare) is that it has historically not negotiated drug prices, although there are several bills now before Congress aiming to change that. US refusal to negotiate or control prices is one reason that US drug prices are the highest in the world.  

A second concern is that the US objective of securing ‘intellectual property rights that reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in US law’ will result in longer patent terms and other forms of exclusivity that will increase the prices the NHS will have to pay for drugs.

However, it is not immediately apparent that UK standards are significantly different from those in the US – the institutional arrangements differ but the levels of protection offered are broadly comparable. Recent publicity about a potential extra NHS medicine bill of £27 billion resulting from a trade deal is based on the NHS having to pay US prices on all drugs – which seems an unlikely outcome unless the UK contingent are extraordinarily bad negotiators.

Nevertheless, in an analysis section (marked for internal distribution only), the UK lead negotiator noted: ‘The impact of some patent issues raised on NHS access to generic drugs (i.e. cheaper drugs) will be a key consideration going forward.’

A third concern is that the US objective of providing ‘fair and open conditions for services trade’ and other US negotiating objectives will oblige the UK to open up the NHS to American healthcare companies.

This is where it gets complicated. At one point in a discussion on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) the US asked if the UK had concerns about their ‘health insurance system’ (presumably a reference to the NHS). The UK response was that it ‘wouldn’t want to discuss particular health care entities at this time, you’ll be aware of certain statements saying we need to protect our needs; this would be something to discuss further down the line…’

On this exchange the UK lead negotiator commented:  ‘We do not currently believe the US has a major offensive interest in this space – not through the SOE chapter at least. Our response dealt with this for now, but we will need to be able to go into more detail about the functioning of the NHS and our views on whether or not it is engaged in commercial activities…’

On the face of it, these documents provide no basis for saying the NHS would be for sale – whatever that means exactly. The talks were simply an exploratory investigation between officials on both sides in advance of possible negotiations.

But it is a fact that US positions in free trade agreements are heavily influenced by corporate interests. Their participation in framing agreements is institutionalized in the US system and the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries in the US spend, by a large margin, more on lobbying the government than any other sector does. Moreover, President Donald Trump has long complained about ‘the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country’.

It is when (and if) the actual negotiations on a trade deal get under way that the real test will come as the political profile and temperature is raised on both sides of the Atlantic.

COVID-19 has put a serious strain on healthcare and economic systems around the world. This virtual roundtable will explore its impact on Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Through a comparative examination of government and society responses, this event will show how COVID-19 has laid bare the region’s broader social, economic and political challenges.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated geopolitical tensions that, in part, have arisen from US-China tensions. At a time when the world needs strong and collective leadership to fight the coronavirus, both countries have been locked in a battle of words characterized by escalating hostility, polarizing narratives, blame and misinformation. Caught in the crossfire, many people of Chinese descent across differing countries have reported an increase in xenophobic attacks.

Middle powers such as the UK and Australia have swerved between recognition of the global collaboration needed to solve this pandemic and calls for China to be held ‘accountable’ for its initial response. Others such, as France and Japan, have been trying to foster international cooperation. 

Against this context, speakers will discuss China’s response to the crisis, including the initial delay and Beijing’s later containment strategies. How do we best assess the delay amidst all the heated rhetoric? What was the response of people within China to the measures? Does COVID-19 mark a point of no return for US-China relations? How might this impact on relations between US allies and China? And what kind of China will emerge from this current crisis?

The US government recently announced restrictions on immigration, stating the new measures were necessary due to COVID-19 and the effect the pandemic has had on the US economy. But what is the role of immigrants in the essential official and unofficial services in the COVID-19 stay-at-home era? How is COVID-19 affecting immigration from Central America and Mexico? 

Separately, there have also been instances of outbreaks among detainees in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers and claims that immigrants who are returning to Guatemala are spreading the virus. How have US immigration policies affected infection rates in Central America and Mexico and among its citizens?

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the US from 2007 - 13, and Anita Isaacs, Benjamin R. Collins Professor of Social Sciences, Haverford College, will join us to discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on migrants.

Chatham House would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo plc, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is scheduled to take place from 15:00 – 16:00 BST.

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.  Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events.

The US government recently announced restrictions on immigration, stating the new measures were necessary due to COVID-19 and the effect the pandemic has had on the US economy. But what is the role of immigrants in the essential official and unofficial services in the COVID-19 stay-at-home era? How is COVID-19 affecting immigration from Central America and Mexico? 

Separately, there have also been instances of outbreaks among detainees in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers and claims that immigrants who are returning to Guatemala are spreading the virus. How have US immigration policies affected infection rates in Central America and Mexico and among its citizens?

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the US from 2007 - 13, and Anita Isaacs, Benjamin R. Collins Professor of Social Sciences, Haverford College, will join us to discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on migrants.

Chatham House would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo plc, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is scheduled to take place from 15:00 – 16:00 BST.

The US government recently announced restrictions on immigration, stating the new measures were necessary due to COVID-19 and the effect the pandemic has had on the US economy. But what is the role of immigrants in the essential official and unofficial services in the COVID-19 stay-at-home era? How is COVID-19 affecting immigration from Central America and Mexico? 

Separately, there have also been instances of outbreaks among detainees in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers and claims that immigrants who are returning to Guatemala are spreading the virus. How have US immigration policies affected infection rates in Central America and Mexico and among its citizens?

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the US from 2007 - 13, and Anita Isaacs, Benjamin R. Collins Professor of Social Sciences, Haverford College, will join us to discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on migrants.

Chatham House would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo plc, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is scheduled to take place from 15:00 – 16:00 BST.

The assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has created much speculation about the possible impact on oil markets and – although any impact will very much depend upon what happens next in terms of political and military responses – theoretically the potential exists for Iran to seriously destabilize oil markets, raising oil prices.

Arguably, it would be in Iran’s interest to do so. It would certainly hurt Trump’s possibility of a second term if higher prices were to last for some time as the 2020 presidential election gets underway. And it would also help shore up Iran’s failing economy. 

The assassination did initially cause oil prices to rise by a few dollars before quickly falling back, and the missile attacks by Iran produced a similar response. However, direct action by Iran to raise prices – for example by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz – is unlikely.

Around one-fifth of the world's oil supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Closing it would invite serious military action by the Americans and many of its allies who, so far, have been rather lukewarm over Trump’s actions. It would also possibly limit Iran’s own oil exports.

Similarly, overt attacks on American allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would probably invite too heavy a reaction, although this is uncertain given the lack of response after the alleged Iranian attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in mid-September.

Indirect action by Iran to affect oil supplies is much more likely as they have many options by using their proxies to affect others’ oil production. This is especially true for Iraq, which is now an important source of global oil supply as Iraqi exports in 2019 averaged 3.53 million barrels per day (Mb/d), a significant amount.

Iraq’s future production has already been damaged as international oil companies are withdrawing staff for safety reasons, anticipating potential attacks by both Iraqi and Iranian sources. It is now very unlikely that the crucial ‘common seawater supply project’ being run by Exxon – essential for expanding production capacity – will go ahead in the near future.

However, one important consequence of the assassination that has attracted little attention is that it has almost fully restored the role of geopolitics into the determination of oil prices. Up to 2014, geopolitics played a key role in determining oil prices in the paper markets where perceptions and expectations ruled.

Prices determined in these markets – NYMEX in New York, ICE in London and other lesser futures markets throughout the world – then influence wet barrel markets where real barrels of oil are traded. 

In 2014, the world was so oversupplied with real oil barrels that the oil price collapsed – the price of Brent crude fell from $110.72 on 23 May to $46.44 eight months later. Thereafter, little if any attention was given to geopolitical events, and geopolitics became marginalized in the determination of crude oil prices.

This began to change in 2019. The market remained physically over-supplied but events in the Gulf began to attract attention. In June, there were a series of attacks on oil tankers close to the Gulf, followed by attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field in September.

The Americans claimed these attacks were launched by Iran, but no convincing evidence for the claim was provided. Both attacks produced an initial price response but it was surprisingly limited and short-lived. However, it did suggest that geopolitics might be creeping back into influencing oil prices.

This became ever more noticeable in the third and fourth quarters as rumours regarding the trade talks between China and US clearly began to affect price – talks going well meant higher oil demand, and prices rose; talks going badly meant lower oil demand, and prices fell.

Meanwhile, the oil market showed signs of tightening towards the end of 2019. Although there was much cheating on the OPEC+ agreement that was trying to restrain production and protect prices, the OPEC meeting last December saw both Iraq and Nigeria agreeing to restrain production. 

US stock levels also began to fall in December and the futures markets began to price in a tightening market towards the end of 2020. Significantly, the tighter the market appears, the greater attention is paid to the level of spare producing capacity.

Just before the attack on Abqaiq, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated there was 3.5 Mb/d spare capacity in OPEC which, historically, is quite comfortable. However, 2.5 of this was estimated to be in Saudi Arabia, so how much of this spare capacity still existed after the Abqaiq attack?

The Saudis claimed the Abqaiq capacity was quickly restored but technical experts greeted this with considerable skepticism, not least because the Abqaiq equipment was highly specialized. If spare capacity is tight, this makes the oil price vulnerable to geopolitical scares and rumours, real or imagined. 

Although the assassination of General Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to geopolitical events, this becomes irrelevant if a serious shooting war starts in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq’s oil infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to attack either directly by Iran or one of its many proxies, suggesting oil prices will become increasingly volatile but, at the same time, benefit from a rising geopolitical premium.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has declared that she wants Europe to become ‘the first climate-neutral continent by 2050’, and in December 2019, the Commission presented the European Green Deal in order to achieve this objective. However, even though greenhouse gas emissions from the EU have fallen by more than 20 per cent since 1990, the Union remains the third largest emitter in the world, after the United States and China.

What are the opportunities and challenges for raising climate ambition in Europe?  Will the EU increase its Nationally Determined Contribution and what impact might this have globally? How might Brexit affect climate action in the EU and the UK?  The second event in the Chatham House COP26 Diplomatic Briefing Series will address these critical questions.

The leaked record of the five meetings of the UK–US Trade & Investment Working Group held in 2017–18 has led to a controversy in the UK election campaign around the claim that ‘the NHS is up for sale’.

But a careful reading of the leaked documents reveals how remarkably little concerns the NHS – in five meetings over 16 months, the NHS is mentioned just four times. The patent regime and how it affects medicines is discussed in more depth but largely in terms of the participants trying to understand each other’s systems and perspectives. For the most part, the discussions were overwhelmingly about everything else a trade deal would cover other than healthcare – matters such as subsidies, rules of origin and customs facilitation.

But this does not mean there will be no impact on Britain’s health service. There are three main concerns about the possible implications of a US–UK trade deal after Brexit – a negotiation that will of course only take place if the UK remains outside the EU customs union and single market and also does not reach a trade agreement with the EU that proves incompatible with US negotiating objectives.

One concern is that the US aim of securing ‘full market access for US products’, expressed in the US negotiating objectives, will affect the ability of NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) to prevent the NHS from procuring products that are deemed too expensive in relation to their benefits. It could also affect the ability of the NHS to negotiate with companies to secure price reductions as, for instance, happened recently with Orkambi, a cystic fibrosis drug.

A peculiarity of the main US government healthcare programme (Medicare) is that it has historically not negotiated drug prices, although there are several bills now before Congress aiming to change that. US refusal to negotiate or control prices is one reason that US drug prices are the highest in the world.  

A second concern is that the US objective of securing ‘intellectual property rights that reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in US law’ will result in longer patent terms and other forms of exclusivity that will increase the prices the NHS will have to pay for drugs.

However, it is not immediately apparent that UK standards are significantly different from those in the US – the institutional arrangements differ but the levels of protection offered are broadly comparable. Recent publicity about a potential extra NHS medicine bill of £27 billion resulting from a trade deal is based on the NHS having to pay US prices on all drugs – which seems an unlikely outcome unless the UK contingent are extraordinarily bad negotiators.

Nevertheless, in an analysis section (marked for internal distribution only), the UK lead negotiator noted: ‘The impact of some patent issues raised on NHS access to generic drugs (i.e. cheaper drugs) will be a key consideration going forward.’

A third concern is that the US objective of providing ‘fair and open conditions for services trade’ and other US negotiating objectives will oblige the UK to open up the NHS to American healthcare companies.

This is where it gets complicated. At one point in a discussion on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) the US asked if the UK had concerns about their ‘health insurance system’ (presumably a reference to the NHS). The UK response was that it ‘wouldn’t want to discuss particular health care entities at this time, you’ll be aware of certain statements saying we need to protect our needs; this would be something to discuss further down the line…’

On this exchange the UK lead negotiator commented:  ‘We do not currently believe the US has a major offensive interest in this space – not through the SOE chapter at least. Our response dealt with this for now, but we will need to be able to go into more detail about the functioning of the NHS and our views on whether or not it is engaged in commercial activities…’

On the face of it, these documents provide no basis for saying the NHS would be for sale – whatever that means exactly. The talks were simply an exploratory investigation between officials on both sides in advance of possible negotiations.

But it is a fact that US positions in free trade agreements are heavily influenced by corporate interests. Their participation in framing agreements is institutionalized in the US system and the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries in the US spend, by a large margin, more on lobbying the government than any other sector does. Moreover, President Donald Trump has long complained about ‘the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country’.

It is when (and if) the actual negotiations on a trade deal get under way that the real test will come as the political profile and temperature is raised on both sides of the Atlantic.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated geopolitical tensions that, in part, have arisen from US-China tensions. At a time when the world needs strong and collective leadership to fight the coronavirus, both countries have been locked in a battle of words characterized by escalating hostility, polarizing narratives, blame and misinformation. Caught in the crossfire, many people of Chinese descent across differing countries have reported an increase in xenophobic attacks.

Middle powers such as the UK and Australia have swerved between recognition of the global collaboration needed to solve this pandemic and calls for China to be held ‘accountable’ for its initial response. Others such, as France and Japan, have been trying to foster international cooperation. 

Against this context, speakers will discuss China’s response to the crisis, including the initial delay and Beijing’s later containment strategies. How do we best assess the delay amidst all the heated rhetoric? What was the response of people within China to the measures? Does COVID-19 mark a point of no return for US-China relations? How might this impact on relations between US allies and China? And what kind of China will emerge from this current crisis?