Steven Mnuchin Is Trying to Rescue the Economy From the Coronavirus

Treasury secretary’s ability to keep the president’s trust while working with those outside the administration is expected to be crucial.

At a World Economic Forum dinner in Davos, Switzerland, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke up. It was 45 minutes into a conversation about climate change and trade, and no one had mentioned the most important issue facing the world, he said: The deadly new coronavirus spreading across China.

Mr. Mnuchin told dinner guests he worried the health crisis could undermine global growth. Earlier that day, Jan. 23, Chinese officials said they were cutting transport in and out of Wuhan, the epicenter of the public health crisis.

Today, the U.S. is a pandemic hot zone, and Mr. Mnuchin has become Washington’s indispensable deal-maker in trying to keep the crisis from throwing the world’s largest economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Over the past month, Mr. Mnuchin has shepherded a pair of coronavirus rescue bills through Congress, including last week’s roughly $2 trillion relief package. He has tapped emergency funds so that the Federal Reserve can keep credit flowing to hemorrhaging markets.

Now, he’s in charge of executing an unprecedented government spending surge in the coming weeks, delivering grants and loans to businesses, sending checks to millions of American households and expanding unemployment benefits amid soaring layoffs.

To get things done in partisan Washington, Mr. Mnuchin has relied on an ability to keep President Trump’s trust while working with Democrats and others Mr. Trump distrusts, particularly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Those skills, people who work with him say, will be all the more needed in the weeks ahead as the pandemic is expected to worsen and as Congress, Mr. Mnuchin and the White House negotiate new rescue measures for the economy.