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President Trump Invokes Defense Production Act And Orders General Motors To Make Ventilators

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Marlo Safi Culture Reporter
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President Donald Trump has ordered General Motors to make ventilators under the Defense Production Act after he criticized the company of not working quickly enough to produce the critical supplies required to care for coronavirus infected patients, CNBC reported Friday.

GM had announced Friday that the company and Ventec Life Systems would be building critical-care ventilators at one of their Indiana plants, CNBC reported. President Trump lashed out at GM over their production of ventilators, tweeting “As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar.”(RELATED: Trump Lashes Out At General Motors To Produce More Ventilators, Invokes Defense Production Act On Twitter)

He added that it’s “always a mess” working with CEO Mary Barra. Trump also invoked “P,” which he clarified in a later tweet to be the Defense Production Act.

Hours after, he ordered GM to make ventilators under the Korean War-era statute that requires certain American companies to produce materials that are in short supply during a national crisis.

“Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but 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,” a White House statement says. “GM was wasting time.”