Pandemics Are Breeding Grounds for Trade Wars

As coronavirus continues to spread outward from China, it’s tempting to see this as a uniquely modern problem, born of the unprecedented ease with which goods, information and people move around the world. In reality, such outbreaks have flourished for centuries thanks largely to a single factor: international trade, the original pandemic superhighway.

Consider for a moment the biggest pandemic in recorded history: the bubonic plague. It ripped through Europe beginning in 1348, killing off a third of the population. Even then, it wasn’t finished, returning in subsequent decades for numerous encores. Though the plague’s precise origins in Asia are still disputed, historians agree that it arrived in Europe via the Crimean port of Kaffa.