At his March 24 daily press conference President Trump again defended his approach to the coronavirus, stressing that the virus has “show[n] how important borders are…[because] without borders you don’t have a nation.” The U.S., he argued, “must show it is a truly independent nation in every sense of the word…dependent on no one.”

The idea of American exceptionalism sells to his base, no doubt, and it appeals to a deeply held belief that when the going gets rough, the United States can and must go it alone. But nothing could be further from the truth, and this mentality puts us and the world at even greater risk.

The real lesson of the coronavirus is that national boundaries matter very little in a modern age where we are unavoidably and inextricably connected, in every sense of the word, to each other. The COVID-19 virus has laid low any notion that humankind, anywhere, is an island. In a matter of a few short weeks, the disease has spread rapidly from its origins in China across the planet and has brought the globe unmercifully to its knees. Daily life, almost everywhere, has been ground to a halt. And the pandemic has only just begun.

While physical distancing is critical to slow the spread of a disease against which we have no immunity, global isolation is precisely the wrong prescription in the age of modern pandemics. Global commerce, with its web of transboundary supply chains, means we depend heavily on each other for everything from basic commodities to food, medicine and electronics that make the modern world go round.

The United States should immediately retreat from the nationalistic and often protectionist policies it has pursued under the Trump administration.

The forces of globalism have ensured that people everywhere are inextricably linked, for better and for worse, and there is simply no going back. Rather than trying to wish this reality away, or to hide behind some imaginary border wall, now is the time for us to use this global connectivity to our advantage, to act collectively together to fight this common scourge.

So what should we do? For starters, the United States and its leaders need to recognize that we are global citizens with a responsibility to lead. This is precisely the wrong moment to turn inward, to walk away from global institutions, and to chastise other nations, even our competitors and adversaries, for their handling of the crisis. We have certainly made our own number of important missteps in our early handling of the crisis. There will be plenty of time for recriminations. But that’s not what’s important now.

The United States should be leading a global effort for a collective response to this pandemic across a wide range of sectors. The doctors and scientists are showing the way, and there is strong evidence that public health officials are doing an excellent job of sharing information and collaborating on tracking cases, sharing data, and using research to chart a medical response to the disease. But more is needed. And fast.

The United States should immediately retreat from the nationalistic and often protectionist policies it has pursued under the Trump administration, which has been a significant departure from the Washington Consensus that has guided Republican and Democratic administrations for several generations. We must recognize that keeping trade and commerce flowing in the midst of a global economic recession will be critical. Global supply chains are like the arteries that cover the planet, coursing with commerce that deliver the essential commodities, finished goods and essential items like medicine and food we all need to survive the crisis.

The United States should lead a coalition of the willing at the World Trade Organization to immediately develop a new regime to ensure seamless trade in critical goods.

The United States should lead a coalition of the willing at the World Trade Organization to immediately develop a new regime to ensure seamless trade in critical goods, eliminating all unnecessary tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade, and promoting streamlined regulations that will facilitate production, testing and shipments of all manner of goods and products that will be urgently needed in the weeks and months to come. This of course runs directly counter to Trump’s approach to global trade, but new circumstances demand a new approach.

In addition to ensuring the free flow of food and core staples that will be essential to promote global stability and avoid food insecurity, scarcity and other threats that risk social instability, the United States should be leading the effort to identify global manufacturing capacity for critical goods like ventilators, respirators, and personal protective equipment and then support efforts to match capacity with production and need.

Even as we mobilize domestic production through the Defense Production Act, we should incentivize global trade in these goods, simplify the barriers to production and trade, and help get these products immediately to market. Some of this can be done in North America, to the benefit of U.S. industry, especially given the strong manufacturing capacity the NAFTA region enjoys (especially in the medical device sector) after years of co-production and a newly strengthened trilateral agreement.

But diversification is key, and we should actively promote collaboration across nations. What good does it do us to survive the pandemic if the world is left behind? A global economic crisis is not in our national interest.

The virus has shown it knows no boundaries and respects no borders. We must fight the enemy on the same terms.

Creative trade policy is just one example of many initiatives that the United States can and must pursue as a leader on the global stage. There are undoubtedly many other good ideas (like promoting a global Manhattan Project in the race for both therapeutics and vaccines, leveraging the global distribution of pharmaceutical manufacturing to rapidly source a collective solution to the problem).

What is clearly not in order is more of the same, tired magical thinking that pretends we live in a bubble and can simply cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. The virus has shown it knows no boundaries and respects no borders. We must fight the enemy on the same terms.

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Michael Camuñez is a Pacific Council Director, head of the Council’s Mexico Initiative, and president and CEO of Monarch Global Strategies.

This article was originally published on Medium.com.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.