Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, March 9th. I'm Nile Boone. Here's

what you need to know today. The final touches on the stimulus bill. But first, more from

our special series, The Week America Changed. Today, a story about the power of words, how

then President Trump's nickname for the coronavirus changed relations with China and the lives of Asian

Americans. It was around this time last year that President Trump started to refer to the coronavirus.

By a nickname, he insisted wasn't racist. Bethany Allen Ibrahimian is Axios' China reporter and has

the story of the lasting impact of this label. Not just on the U.S.-China relationship, but also on

racism against Asian Americans here in the United States. I'll put it bluntly. The word choice was

deliberate. From roughly March 16th onward in press briefings and on Twitter, President Trump

refers to the coronavirus as the China virus or the Chinese virus. In one early March briefing,

Trump even crossed out the word corona and replaced it with the word Chinese in black marker.

While there was immediate pushback from Asian Americans who warned really strongly that this would

exacerbate racism against Asians. By March, Asian Americans were already experiencing verbal abuse

and even attacks by people who seemed to associate them with the coronavirus. Representative

Judy Chu out in California warned against the use of this term. He is creating more xenophobia every

single time. He does that and we can see the results in what's happening to Asian Americans across

this country. A woman was assaulted on a New York subway just for wearing a mask. But when Trump was

asked in a press briefing if he thought using the term Chinese virus puts Asian Americans at risk,

Trump said no. Nonetheless, President Trump appeared to adopt this phrase for two reasons.

First, administration officials said this was an attempt to push back against China's disinformation.

And Trump said that those who opposed using the term were siding with China. It's true that by

this time, China was deploying propaganda and disinformation to obscure the fact that the pandemic

...