唐纳德·特朗普在2020年4月4日的新闻发布会上发言
唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)总统表示，他将任命一个委员会来制定在冠状病毒大流行之际启动经济的战略，听取知名共和党人的呼吁，这些人希望他推进计划，尽管他自己的医学专家和一些州长持保留意见。
特朗普将于周二正式宣布该团队成立。据报道，会议将由白宫办公厅主任马克·梅多斯主持。
他表示，该组织将独立于副总统迈克·彭斯领导的白宫冠状病毒特别工作组和他的女婿、高级顾问贾里德·库什纳领导的供应链“打击部队”开展工作。与这些组织不同，它不会每天开会，很可能会远程开展大部分业务。
据总统称，该委员会将由代表共和党和民主党的商界领袖、高管、医学专家和州长组成。
特朗普周五在白宫冠状病毒特别工作组的每日新闻发布会上表示:“我不会让所有的州长都参加，但我想让一些有代表性的州长加入委员会。”。
他建议参加竞选的州长包括新泽西州的菲尔·墨菲、路易斯安那州的约翰·贝尔·爱德华兹、加州的加文·纽瑟姆——都是民主党人——以及俄亥俄州的共和党人迈克·德温。
在疾病控制和预防中心的“30天阻止疾病传播”指导方针于本月底到期后，特朗普表达了希望经济“大爆炸”重启的愿望。
但是一位白宫官员新闻周刊特朗普被设定在5月1日截止日期的报道是不准确的。
“我听到的唯一谈论5月1日的人是那些媒体人士，”这位官员说，他要求匿名，因为他们无权谈论内部讨论。他们补充说，他们从未从政府内部的任何人那里听到过类似的消息。
但熟悉该特别工作组工作的白宫助理表示，特朗普仍坚持让美国人尽快重返工作岗位，以弥补过去一个月遭受的经济损失，从而让他能够利用强劲的经济形势为自己的连任辩护。
何时以及如何让美国经济走出衰退的问题，加深了总统、他的经济顾问和其他支持迅速重启经济的心腹，以及他自己的白宫特别工作组中继续敦促谨慎的医学专家之间现存的分歧。
福克斯新闻主持人塔克·卡尔森称，特朗普还面临着来自其保守媒体“厨房内阁”一名杰出成员的压力。
尽管卡尔森批评特朗普上个月没有认真对待COVID-19的威胁，促使总统承认日益严重的流感大流行对美国构成了严重威胁，但他后来改变了方向，并在最近几天一直敦促特朗普开始重启经济。
“你如何让一个有3.2亿人口的国家从孤立和失业中恢复到更好的状态？”卡尔森在周四的晚间节目中问道。“你现在听不到很多人详细谈论这个话题，但你应该听到。”
白宫特别工作组的一位医学专家，疾病预防控制中心主任罗伯特·雷德菲尔德博士周一说，需要有一种方法来快速准确地检测人们，以确定他们目前是否携带病毒，并检测人们是否通过成功地对抗病毒而获得了免疫力。
雷德菲尔德在全国广播公司的《今日》节目中说，国家的重新开放必须是“一个循序渐进的过程，必须是数据驱动的。”
但在接受《纽约时报》采访时，特朗普的首席贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗(Peter Navarro)博士认为，疾控中心的老板和其他顶级医生对普通美国人的财务担忧不敏感。
“令人失望的是，如此多的医学专家和权威人士在媒体上趾高气扬，似乎对长期经济关闭可能导致的重大生命损失和对美国家庭的打击充耳不闻，”他说。
纳瓦罗是一位好斗的中国鹰派人士，特朗普经常称他为“我的彼得”，他指责雷德菲尔德和美国国家过敏和传染病研究所长期负责人安东尼·福齐(Anthony Fauci)等医生“在他们的肥皂盒里虔诚地吹捧[，说的只是医学真理的一半，而没有提及或考虑等式的另一半，这是与经济长期关闭相关的非常真实的致命危险。”
根据摩根士丹利分析师马修·哈里逊的一份报告，现有数据显示，新COVID-19病例的数量可能在5月份大幅下降，但雷德菲尔德和其他人表示，这种检测是必要的，以表明谁是和不是免疫的非典-Cov-2可能要到6月份才能提供。
“我们认为，重新开放经济的道路将是漫长的。哈里森写道:“这将需要开启和关闭各种形式的社会距离，并且最早在2021年春天，只有当疫苗可用时，这种距离才会结束。”。
尽管缺乏检测手段，但一位著名的共和党人——德克萨斯州州长格雷格·艾伯特(Greg Abbott)——一直在推动结束社会距离，公共卫生专家认为这种距离减缓了COVID-19的传播，并降低了纽约等所谓热点地区的新感染率。
在周五的新闻发布会上，雅培表示，他将很快公布一项行政命令，概述他所在州的企业如何重新开业。
雅培表示，他的命令“将侧重于保护生命，同时恢复生计”，并强调他认为两者都可以安全完成。
“德克萨斯人有一点，他们喜欢工作，他们想重返工作岗位，”他说。
另一位共和党州长，马里兰州的拉里·霍根在美国广播公司新闻“本周”节目中说，他没有“人为的最后期限”来重新开放他的州
“现在，第一件事是拯救生命和保护人们的安全，”他说。“我们也必须考虑如何最终提升并让一些人回去工作，但你不能只是挑选一个日期，然后换个开关。我认为事情不会这么简单。”
尽管基本上关闭了美国经济的家庭指令是由州长发布的，需要州长解除，特朗普说他不需要他们的支持来宣布美国“重新开放”
在周一早上发布的一系列推文中，特朗普声称州长在自己州内的权力——这是美国联邦制的一个基本特征——并不延伸至州长是否可以决定维持其在家办公的命令。
相反，特朗普在没有证据的情况下声称，州长可以解除自己的命令的想法是“虚假新闻媒体”的产物
“为了制造冲突和混乱，虚假新闻媒体的一些人说，开放各州是州长的决定，而不是美国总统和联邦政府的决定。让人们充分理解这是不正确的，”特朗普周一在推特上写道，并补充道，“出于许多好的理由”，这样的决定属于总统。
DONALD TRUMP AND HIS SUPPORTERS PUSH AHEAD WITH PLANS TO REOPEN ECONOMY WHETHER GOVERNORS LIKE IT OR NOT
Donald Trump speaks during an April 4, 2020 press briefing (screengrab)
President Donald Trump said he will appoint a commission to develop strategies for jump-starting the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, heeding calls from prominent Republicans who want him to press ahead with plans despite the reservations of his own medical experts and some governors.
Trump will formally unveil the group Tuesday. It will reportedly be chaired by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
He has said the group will work separately from the White House Coronavirus Task Force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and the supply chain "strike force" led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Unlike those groups, it will not meet every day and will most likely conduct most of its business remotely.
According to the president, the council will be composed of a mix of business leaders, executives, medical experts, and governors representing both the Republican and Democratic parties.
"I'm not going to have all of the governors, but I'd like to put some representative governors on the council," Trump said on Friday during the White House Coronavirus Task Force's daily press briefing.
Among the governors he suggested could take part were New Jersey's Phil Murphy, Louisiana's John Bel Edwards, and California's Gavin Newsom—all Democrats—as well as Republican Mike DeWine of Ohio.
Trump has expressed a desire for the economy to reopen with a "Big Bang" after the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's "30 days to stop the spread" guidelines expire at the end of this month.
But one White House official Newsweek spoke with said reports that Trump has been set on a May 1 deadline were not accurate.
"The only people I hear talk about May 1 are those in the media," said the official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about internal deliberations. They added that they'd "never heard" anything of the sort from anyone inside the administration.
But White House aides familiar with the task force's work say Trump has remained fixated on the idea of bringing Americans back to their jobs quickly to make up the economic losses suffered over the past month to allow him to resume using a strong economy to make the case for his re-election.
The question of when and how to bring the American economy out of a recession has deepened an existing cleavage between the President, his economic advisers and other confidantes who are in favor of a rapid push to reopen the economy, and the medical experts on his own White House's task force who have continued to urge caution.
Trump is also facing pressure from a prominent member of his conservative media "kitchen cabinet," Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
While Carlson criticized Trump for not taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously last month, prompting the president to admit that the growing pandemic was a serious threat to the country, he has since reversed course and has in recent days been pushing for Trump to begin reopening the economy.
"How do you move a nation of 320 million people from isolation and joblessness back to something better?" Carlson asked during his nightly show Thursday. "You don't hear many people talking about that right now in any detail, but you should be."
One medical expert on the White House task force, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, said Monday that there needs to be a way to quickly and accurately test people to determine whether they currently have the virus and to test people to see if they've developed immunity by successfully fighting the virus off.
Redfield told NBC's "Today" that re-opening the country must be "a step-by-step gradual process, that's got to be data-driven."
But Trump's top trade adviser, Dr. Peter Navarro, dismissed the CDC boss and other top doctors as insensitive to the financial concerns of everyday Americans in an interview with The New York Times.
"It's disappointing that so many of the medical experts and pundits pontificating in the press appear tone-deaf to the very significant losses of life and blows to American families that may result from an extended economic shutdown," he said.
Navarro, a pugilistic China hawk who Trump often refers to as "My Peter," accused doctors like Redfield and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of "piously preen[ing] on their soap boxes speaking only half of the medical truth without reference or regard for the other half of the equation, which is the very real mortal dangers associated with the closure of the economy for an extended period."
According to a report by Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Harrison, the available data shows that the number of new COVID-19 cases could sharply decline in May, but the kind of testing that Redfield and others say is necessary to indicate who is and is not immune to SARS-Cov-2 may not be available until June.
"We believe the path to re-opening the economy is going to be long. It will require turning on and off various forms of social distancing and will only come to an end when vaccines are available, in the spring of 2021 at the earliest," Harrison wrote.
Despite the lack of test availability, one prominent Republican, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, has been pushing for an end to the social distancing which public health experts credit with slowing the spread of COVID-19 and reducing the rate of new infections in so-called hot spots like New York.
During a Friday news conference, Abbott said he would soon unveil an executive order to outline how businesses can reopen in his state.
Abbott said his order "will focus on protecting lives while restoring livelihoods" and stressed that he believes both can be done safely.
"One thing about Texans, they enjoy working and they want to get back into the workforce," he said.
Another Republican governor, Maryland's Larry Hogan, said he doesn't have an "artificial deadline" for re-opening his state during an appearance on ABC News' "This Week."
"Right now, the first thing is saving lives and keeping people safe," he said. "We do also have to think about how do we eventually ramp up and get some folks back to work, but you can't just pick a date and flip a switch. I don't think it's going to be that simple."
Despite the stay-at-home orders that have largely shuttered the U.S. economy are issued by governors and would need to be lifted by governors, Trump said he doesn't need their support to declare the U.S. "re-opened."
In a series of tweets posted Monday morning, Trump claimed that a state governor's authority within his or her own state's borders—a basic feature of American federalism—does not extend to whether governors can decide to keep their stay-at-home orders in place.
Instead, Trump claimed without evidence that the idea that a governor can lift his or her own order is a creation of the "fake news media."
"For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect," Trump tweeted Monday, adding that "for many good reasons" such a decision belongs to the President.
