NYT op-ed praises Chinese government for helping Latin American companies deal with the coronavirus crisis they started, blasts Trump

A New York Times op-ed published Tuesday by "foreign affairs experts" Paul Angelo and Rebecca Bill Chavez lavished praise on the Chinese government for, according to the authors, "stepping in to fill a void left by President Trump, who has alienated longtime partners and undermined the country's standing in Latin America."

The authors specifically praised the Chinese government for delivering 100,000 masks, 50,000 test kits, and a whopping five whole ventilators to Mexico. Somehow the article did not mention that an astonishingly high percentage of the masks and test exported by the Chinese government to other countries have been defective, or that the United States government had announced it would be sending thousands of ventilators to Mexico free of charge.

Of course, it also goes without saying (which is presumably why the op-ed in question did not say it) that no countries in Latin America would have any cases of coronavirus at all if the Chinese government had not lied about the coronavirus for weeks and allowed it to spread throughout the globe. The more important thing, according to the authors of this article, is that "From Santiago, Chile, to Mexico City and everywhere in between, America's leadership is being called into question and China is positioning itself to carry the mantle."

The article criticizes President Trump for daring to continue to fight against narcotics trafficking into the United States. According to the authors, Trump's announcement that he would position additional military assets in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific to support this goal was "tone deaf" and should have instead consisted of an announcement of a "surge of humanitarian assistance to our neighbors in America."

Notably, when Trump announced a surge of humanitarian assistance to our neighbors in Mexico at his press briefing on Monday, the writers of this op-ed failed to mention it in their piece that ran on Tuesday — so it might fairly be objected that any such announcement would have been largely ignored by the people calling for it anyway.

The authors of the article conclude that "the spread of COVID-19 promises to exacerbate human suffering and trigger an even greater migration crisis while leaving the hemisphere more open to Chinese cooperation and ever more wary of American partnership."

It seems incredible that five measly ventilators could buy such a thing (compared with thousands from the United States), but it is clear that they can buy the Chinese government free propaganda in the New York Times.