Why lawsuits won’t cure pandemic’s financial ills between US states and Chinese government

In 2025, even as US President Donald Trump sought to stabilise trade ties with Beijing, two Republican-led states were moving in the opposite direction, securing nearly US$50 billion in federal lawsuits for what they say was economic damage caused by China’s deliberate stripping of US hospitals and businesses of essential Covid-19 supplies.

Using a new reading of the “commercial activity” exception to a 50-year-old US law that generally blocks lawsuits against foreign governments, a federal court awarded Missouri US$24 billion in March, saying China’s early-pandemic hoarding of masks and gloves was market behaviour, not a sovereign act.

In November, a federal judge in Mississippi issued a similar US$25 billion judgment based on antitrust and consumer protection claims.

But the year ended with neither state collecting a dime. And what began as a courtroom strategy to hold China accountable has instead morphed into a high-stakes diplomatic tightrope.

Experts say that while attorneys general in both states have vowed to seize Chinese assets, the process is riddled with complex legal barriers that make execution virtually impossible and the dispute has escalated.

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WHO ends Covid-19 mission in Wuhan, says lab leak ‘extremely unlikely’

With Beijing filing a retaliatory lawsuit in Wuhan, the US State Department has found itself caught in the middle, quietly working to avoid triggering another round of trade tensions as Trump plans his trip to China in April.

South China Morning Post