What a change of pace in the past five or six weeks. It did not really hit me until the other Finnish interns packed their bags and headed back to Finland mid-March. One intern had arrived just a week or two earlier to spend some time in the States before heading to the Embassy of Finland in South Korea. Yet, soon she heard she could not go there due to the virus and so she headed right back home.
In this post, I want to share with you why I’m still here in Washington DC even though other interns left, what my work has been pre-COVID-19 and during the COVID-19 times. The upcoming blog posts will go deeper into some of the topics I have been working on.
My internship ended at the end of February but I was lucky enough to get a continuation to my contract since I showed good progress in my work and the next intern had cancelled. As the virus started to spread in the U.S. I was contacted by my school asking whether I wanted to come back to Finland, as it may be hard in the upcoming months. To my understanding, some schools required the interns and students abroad to come home and/or the employer required them to do so. I might have been lucky enough to continue work since officially I was already employed by the Embassy and not through my school as I had been for the internship. Being a U.S. Citizen and having family here may have also helped.
During February until mid-March the topics were quite vast. Internally I was helping make sense of the economics team’s specialization areas and organizational structure as well as the constantly changing White House (WH), State Department or other contacts. Even though it was quite mechanical work it has allowed me to understand not just the Embassy structure but also WH, and State Department organizations of which the latter two still seem quite complex…and dynamic. More exciting topics included the niche focus of innovative wood products and how it affects the construction industry. Finland happens to be big in forestry business. A short published piece from my research can be found here (in Finnish, Sorry!) The main ideas for that was found from congressional hearings and reading different sections of the law.
Other more common knowledge topics included understanding the privacy views in the U.S. through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Privacy Framework; diving in the deep end with tax and trade wars, that is, understanding the current Digital Service Tax (DST) debate and WTO disputes; and following the progress of specific bills such as Murkowski’s energy bill in the Senate. I also attended EU coordination meetings and even met with high ranking members from the State Department.
As COVID-19 spread and the whole Embassy shifted to crisis mode my focus fell almost entirely on the effects of COVID-19. Towards the end of March i worked on understanding the immediate effects on ways of working, trade talks and the economy. Understanding the effects on the economy has been ongoing with most recently understanding the effect of inequality on exacerbating effects of COVID-19. I also looked closely into tariff changes, export restrictions etc. as well as what the FED and Congress had done regarding the stimulus programs and package.
Being able to follow world events in almost real time from an economics perspective has truly been exciting and the amount of learning I’ve gained has been unprecedented. Yes, I used the word “unprecedented” in a positive context for a change. The rest of the economics team has been very helpful in dumbing down complex issues on how the world works. Thank you.
“Fun” fact: Today oil prices just went negative for the first time in history.
Stay Safe -economicsdan
What In The World Is Happening 