The pandemic, however, has strained that solidarity. Trade barriers within Europe have sprung up remarkably quickly. In March, France and Germany banned sales of vital hospital equipment outside of national borders, including to virus-ravaged Italy. The European Commission had to step in with a compromise: member states could limit exports of medical supplies to everyone else, so long as they played nice with one another. With that arrangement, Brussels salvaged internal harmony—at the cost of the moral authority on multilateralism that Europe had worked so hard to maintain during the age of Trump.