WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th March, 2020) President Donald Trump deployed the wartime Defense Production Act against General Motors (GM), accusing the automaker of wasting time in protracted negotiations over making ventilators during a national emergency, according to a White House statement on Friday.
"Today, I signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators," Trump said. "Our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course. GM was wasting time."
The wartime DPA allows the government to force companies to make goods needed for national defense.
Earlier, US automakers Ford and General Motors said they were intensifying production of healthcare equipment for hospital workers and coronavirus patients after Trump threatened to invoke executive wartime powers against them for allegedly being slow on the effort.
Mark Truby, vice president of communications at Ford Motor Company, said in a statement on Twitter that the company was "delivering tens of thousands of Ford-produced face shields to hospitals and police agencies, including the NYPD. We have teams working flat out with GE Healthcare to boost production of simplified ventilators and with 3M to increase the production of powered air-purifying respirators."
General Motors' unit Ventec Life Systems said in a statement that it was taking "aggressive steps" to ramp up production for more critical equipment, including surgical masks.
The statement said Ventec and GM are poised to deliver the first ventilators next month and ramp up manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 critical care ventilators per month.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration balked at a GM plan to manufacture 80,000 ventilators when the automaker announced a price of more than $1 billion, claiming a need to explore offers from other manufacturers.
On Thursday, the United States surpassed China as world leader in confirmed coronavirus cases. As of Friday afternoon, the United States had more than 97,000 cases versus China, which had under 82,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
