Yet another indication that China knew it was about to release a deadly and destructive pandemic on the world is seen in its last minute insertion into the Phase 1 trade deal of a clause releasing it from its obligations under the deal in the event of a natural disaster. It is another reason why China pushes the wet markets story about the origin of the Wuhan virus and dismisses a leak from or accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. If the lab origin for the Wuhan virus is officially confirmed, China’s economy is fatally screwed. 

In an episode of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s  “Common Sense” on YouTube , Giuliani interviewed  K.T. McFarland, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor under Michael Flynn for the first four months of the Trump administration. In the video interview, McFarland provided a key reason China is pushing the wet markets alibi and simultaneously blaming the U.S. for the Wuhan virus pandemic:

One of the reasons that they keep insisting, despite mounting evidence that it came from a lab in Wuhan, they keep insisting, no, no, it came from a wet market, or maybe it was America who did it.  They cannot admit culpability for the following reason, if they do, then there’s a clause that they put into the Phase 1 US-China Trade Deal, where in essence in this trade deal it said we would lift sanctions, we would lift the tariffs on them and then they would buy a lot of agriculture and other goods from us.

But there’s a clause that’s in there, a get out of jail free clause, which says, however, if there is a natural occurring disaster, the two parties will renegotiate.  In other words, China doesn’t necessarily want to keep the terms of the deal.  And so it’s very important for everybody, for them, to say, well, it’s a naturally occurring disaster coming out of the wet lab.  It wasn’t China who did that.

So not only do they give themselves an out for the trade deal, that they were pressured into signing, but they also will give themselves an out if companies and countries and individuals, all come to the International Courts and try to sue China.

Boom. One economist goes as far as calling China’s hiding of the percolating virus pandemic and its suspension of travel to and from Wuhan while deliberately allowing international flights out of Wuhan  an “act of war”:

Economist Danielle DiMartino Booth says what China has done is no less than an "act of war" by failing to report the coronavirus outbreak while adding a pandemic clause to their $200 billion trade deal agreement with the United States.

Booth, who is the CEO & Chief Strategist of intelligence research firm Quill Intelligence, pointed out in an interview that China announced its first coronavirus case "within days" of putting pen to paper on the Phase One agreement on Jan. 15.

She reveals that because of the "unfettered travel" that took place because of China's misinformation of COVID-19, the pandemic reached a point where it was "impossible to contain, and the Xi Jinping-led nation should be held accountable for the global pandemic along with the World Health Organization (WHO) for its deference to China…

According to Booth, by late November word had already gotten out that a deadly virus was spreading in Wuhan and the Chinese government were fully aware of the coronavirus outbreak when they signed the trade deal with the U.S…

She added that in order to safeguard its interests, China added in a pandemic "force majeure" clause, which essentially relieves the party from any obligation should there be an unforseeable event that is beyond its control such as an act of god like an earthquake or epidemic.

"Such "force majeure" language, while common in commercial contracts, is rare in trade agreements, particularly between two countries with economies so large that they are essentially immune to localized floods and droughts," notes Huffington Post.

"In late November word had already gotten out that there was a virus in Wuhan," she said. "Six weeks later on January 15, the U.S. trade deal was signed with an out-clause that the Chinese made sure was in there. That said if there was any act of God, a pandemic, then they didn't have to make good on what they'd committed to buy from the U.S.”

China knew in advance of the deal that it had created, or at least unleashed, a monster in its labs. It foresaw its deadly effects and hoped to withstand it internally while deliberately allowing it to spread without warning to an unsuspecting and largely unprepared West. That is why it vacuumed up and hoarded beforehand all the protective equipment it could find leading to shortages abroad. That is why it allowed international flights allow those infected in China to seed the virus outside China. China seeks world domination, and Beijing considered this one way to achieve it, even if accidently. After all, a global pandemic is a terrible thing to waste.

China was also mad at a United States that, under President Trump, was fighting back on trade, ending decades of hundreds of billions annually in intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices that destroyed U.S. companies and decimated entire U.S. industries. Let the West suffer. Let their economies collapse. And to minimize Beijing’s own inevitable economic damage, insert this pandemic clause into the trade agreement. Why buy $250 billion in U.S. goods and help out the weakened U.S. economy if it didn’t have to?

To invoke the natural disaster clause, China must maintain its innocence, either through perpetuating the wet markets myth or blaming the U.S. while shipping useless protective equipment including ventilators that kill their patients to the West and then charging for their generosity.

President Trump is not fooled by this latest Chinese gambit and has threatened retaliation should they dare such a move:

US President Donald Trump has threatened to terminate the trade deal with China if Beijing did not honour its provisions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that originated in the country…

The deal, which calls on China to buy USD 200 billion worth of US products, is set to move ahead as planned. However, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in a report said China could invoke a clause in the agreement that allows for fresh trade consultations between the two countries "in the event of a natural disaster or other unforeseeable events". "If that happens, we'll do a termination and we'll do what I can do better than anybody," Trump told reporters on Tuesday during his daily White House press conference on coronavirus.

Regardless, we should impose a great wall of tariffs including a Wuhan surcharge until its damages are paid in full. Our debt to China must be cancelled and in the meantime interest payments on that debt be held in escrow along with confiscated Chinese assets in this country. All Chinese nationals currently spying in our universities and universities must be expelled. We must close the Confucius Institutes operating in America’s educational institutions that spread Chinese propaganda promoting Beijing as benign and benevolent.

China must pay, and pay dearly, for what it has deliberately done to us.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.