The coronavirus is just starting to have an impact on the globe’s economy and politics

The World Health Organization has made it official: Coronavirus is the first “global health emergency” of our new era of major power competition. It will affect global markets, but also geopolitics, as well.

It’s already clear that the coronavirus’ impact, though too early to fully measure, will be significant on Chinese and global supply chains, markets and economies; on the legitimacy and the trust enjoyed by the Chinese Communist Party with its own people; and on Asian regional politics and U.S.-Chinese relations, where trust already was in such short supply.

So, it’s not too early to contemplate the potential, unintended consequences of the virus, thought to have originated in a Wuhan wildlife wet market yet already having resulted in more than 210 deaths and more than 10,000 confirmed cases in 19 regions of China and 20 countries around the world. The cases now include the first person-to-person transmission in the United States, and a rare State Department level four advisory of “do not travel” to anywhere in China.

So even in a heavy news week during which the United Kingdom left the European Union, the United States announced a new Mideast peace plan, and the Senate advanced its impeachment trial of President Trump, none of that beats the potential of coronavirus for global impact.

The first effect, and perhaps the easiest of them all to measure, will be the hit to Chinese and other markets and economies, at a time when the world in any case was wary of a “black swan” event that might nudge it toward recession after the world economy’s worst year in a decade in 2019. U.S. markets convulsed Friday, falling by more than 600 points.

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