The coronavirus relief package signed by President Trump Wednesday provides unemployment benefits and free coronavirus testing to millions of Americans suddenly out of a job, but guarantees paid sick leave to less than 20% of American workers. Earlier this month, Trump signed into law an $8 billion coronavirus response package and has laid out the first details of a third, $1 trillion economic package and invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to allow the government to direct industrial production. For more on those bailouts and who benefits, we speak with Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor and chief economist for the Roosevelt Institute. He served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and as chief economist of the World Bank. His latest book is “People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. President Trump Wednesday signed a coronavirus relief package providing unemployment benefits and free coronavirus testing to millions of Americans suddenly out of a job. The aid package guarantees paid leave to less than 20% of American workers. It does not apply to companies with 500 or more workers, and workplaces with fewer than 50 workers can request to opt out. On Wednesday, the White House also ordered the suspension of evictions and foreclosures through April. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones plummeted 7% at midday, triggering an automatic halt to trading for the fourth time in the last two weeks. The market crash has wiped out nearly all stock market gains since President Trump took office in 2017. Earlier this month, Trump signed into law an $8 billion coronavirus response package. At a White House press conference Wednesday, Trump laid out the first details of a third, $1 trillion economic package and invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to allow the government to direct industrial production.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that’s what we’re fighting. … You have to close parts of an economy that six weeks ago were the best they’ve ever been. We had the best economy we’ve ever had. And then one day you have to close it down in order to defeat this enemy. … We’ll be invoking the Defense Production Act just in case we need it. In other words, I think you all know what it is, and it can do a lot of good things if we need it, and we will — we will have it all completed.
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