In 2025, even as US President Donald Trump sought to stabilise trade ties with Beijing, two Republican-led states were moving in the opposite direction, securing nearly US$50 billion in federal lawsuits for what they say was economic damage caused by China’s deliberate stripping of US hospitals and businesses of essential Covid-19 supplies.
Using a new reading of the “commercial activity” exception to a 50-year-old US law that generally blocks lawsuits against foreign governments, a federal…