Coronavirus: Trillion-dollar injection to save US economy

The Trump administration will send cheques directly to Americans within weeks as part of a $1 trillion emergency stimulus package proposal.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday. Picture: AP

The Trump administration will send cheques directly to Americans within weeks as part of a $1 trillion emergency stimulus package proposal to prop up the world’s largest economy.

The move came as the number of deaths in the US from COVID-19 exceeded 100, with a ­record 1000 new infections in only 24 hours.

The disease has now killed ­almost 8000 people worldwide and has infected more than 198,000.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that it would be “several weeks or maybe longer” before the strict new social restrictions unveiled this week were slowing the rapid rate of ­infections in the US.

President Donald Trump said he was determined to introduce a massive stimulus package to help protect average Americans and prop up the economy at a time when it was shutting down as ­people self-isolated to protect themselves from the virus.

“We’re going big,” Mr Trump said of the overall $US1 trillion package, which will require congressional approval. “I think we want to get it done. And have a big infusion as opposed to going through little meetings every ­couple of days. We don’t want to do it that way. We want to go big.”

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the government was expecting to send cheques to citizens immediately. “And I mean now, in the next two weeks,” he said.

Congress is discussing giving $US1000 ($1660) to each American adult except for high-income households.

The move is the most dramatic measure yet to rescue the US economy and would be one of the largest fiscal emergency packages ever assembled.

Mr Trump said giving cash directly to Americans was a faster way to protect the economy than other methods such as a proposed temporary elimination of payroll tax. “Payroll tax is one way, but it does come over a period of months, many months,” Mr Trump said in a 90-minute White House press conference with the briefing of the coronavirus taskforce.

“And we want to do something much faster than that. So I think we have ways of getting money out pretty quickly and very accurately.”

Mr Mnuchin said “We want to make sure Americans get money in their pockets quickly and small-business owners have access to funds.”

“We have put a proposal on the table that would inject a trillion into the economy,” he said, adding that the US could worry about deficits “at a different time”.

The proposal would give relief to small and large businesses and households across the country in the face of an economic slowdown that seems certain to usher in a ­recession.

Mr Mnuchin said hotels and airlines especially needed to get emergency funding as demand dropped away sharply with Americans staying at home as the virus spreads across the country. The package includes about $US50bn in assistance for the US airline industry that Mr Mnuchin said had been hit harder than after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001.

Congress is hoping to pass the package by the end of the week. It follows another assistance package passed by the House of Representatives last week to provide paid sick leave and other benefits to workers economically affected by the virus.

The emergency assistance follows the imposition of sweeping guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus in the US. These included working and schooling from home, avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people, cancelling non-essential travel and avoiding eating in bars and restaurants. A growing number of states have ordered bars and restaurants to close.

Dr Fauci said a key challenge was to persuade young people, who experience relatively mild symptoms from the virus to join the rest of the population in isolating themselves from others.

He said young Americans may not be under ­direct health threats from the virus but could easily pass it on the older people they meet, ­including in their own families.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia