WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering how to reopen the U.S. economy when a 15-day shutdown ends next week, even as the highly contagious coronavirus is spreading rapidly and hospitals are bracing for a wave of virus-related deaths.
“America will again and soon be open for business,” Trump told a White House news conference. “We are not going to let it turn into a long-lasting financial problem.”
Trump issued guidelines a week ago that he said aimed to slow the spread of the disease over 15 days, including curbing unnecessary travel. In the meantime, economic activity has ground to a halt in some states.
But watching the loss of many jobs and a sharp drop in stock markets and facing a tough re-election battle, Trump has privately expressed worries to aides and allies about the impact of the restrictions on the long-term health of the economy.
Trump told reporters it was possible to resume economic activity in states with what he said were relatively low rates of infection, citing Nebraska, Idaho and Iowa as examples, while continuing to work on the hot zones in other states like New York.
“If it were up to the doctors, they’d say let’s shut down the entire world,” said Trump.
Trump senior economic adviser Larry Kudlow signaled a possible policy change in an earlier interview with Fox News on Monday: “The president is right. The cure can’t be worse than the disease. We’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.”
The White House would look at “a number of things,” he said.
Trump, who had hoped to build his campaign for the Nov. 3 election on a booming U.S. economy, now is loo