New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump has signed the largest economic stimulus package in history worth about $2 trillion to rescue the nation from the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic after Congress in a rare show of unity passed it.
The relief package was enacted on Friday as the US recorded 103,942 coronavirus cases during a week in which 3.3 million people officially registered as unemployed. A total of 1,693 people have died in the US due to the disease.
The highlight of the package, which amounts to almost 10 per cent of the US GDP, is an outright payment of $1,200 each to almost all adults in the country and $500 each to most children to help them tide over the crisis.
After months of confrontation and invectives capped by Trump’s impeachment, the two parties came together to approve the recovery package by voice vote on Friday in the House of Representatives and unanimously in the Senate on Wednesday.
But the hostility lingered as Trump did not invite Democratic Party leaders who had worked hard to get it through Congress to the signing ceremony. Later at a news briefing, he said he expected another emergency relief package for the nation’s economy crushed by closing of businesses as a preventive measure against the spread of the virus and the rising medical costs.
China to share coronavirus data with US: Trump
China will share its data related to the novel coronavirus pandemic with the US and the country will learn from Beijing’s experience, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he held an hour-long conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Trump spoke to Xi over telephone, days after the US president angered Beijing by referring to the coronavirus as “Chinese virus” and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China’s ruling Communist Party posed a “substantial threat” to Americans’ health and their way of life. Xi assured full support to Trump in fighting the coronavirus as America emerged as the next major epicentre of the pandemic, but underlined that infectious diseases did not recognise any border or race. (Agencies)
