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These are good reasons why the US and China might not ban it. But an uninvolved third country could still have leverage. The US and China wouldn't have to lose face, they'd just say "oh well, this crazy third country really thinks this stuff is dangerous, we don't, but trade is more important to us, so we'll cave to their demands."
Certain GMO crops have been effectively banned because Europe doesn't like them. And that seems like a much bigger political lift than banning GOF research.
There are lots of semi-existing levers that nation states or medical orgs could use. They could just dumbly pretend that any city with a bio lab is the equivalent of a place with an active prion disease. They could just maintain COVID era quarantine policies for anyone visiting countries/cities with a bio lab. Those cities would become no-go zones for tourists, food exports, and casual business travel. That would at least force these labs out of big cities and into rural areas with no agriculture.
I think it would be relatively easy for any European country to single-handedly ban GOF research worldwide. They just have to:
These are all countries I think might be able to do it alone, but if any two or three of them teamed up it would definitely happen: UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, India, Singapore, Egypt or Panama. I keep thinking of more that might have just enough political capital to pull it off. They really don't need much, the interest group that cares about keeping these labs open is tiny and not very powerful. They've just lucked into a situation where the host country can't be the first one to ban them without losing a lot of face. But I doubt leaders in the US or China like having their reputation held hostage by a bunch of virologists, so they are only allies of convenience.
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