President Trump said the private sector is actively stepping up to manufacture products to help combat the coronavirus and that, for the moment, it’s not necessary for him to invoke the Defense Procurement Act to mandate certain procurement of equipment.
“We have so many companies making so many products,” Mr. Trump said Saturday at a White House briefing on COVID-19. “We have car companies, without having to use the act… we have the act to use in case we need it, but we have so many things being made right now by so many — they’ve just stepped up.”
Mr. Trump said Hanes is retrofitting manufacturing capabilities to produce protective masks.
General Motors said Friday that it would be working with Ventec Life Systems to try to ramp up the production of ventilators.
“We sometimes will be competing against states, which I don’t want, and we’ll drop out of the bidding,” Mr. Trump said. “If they are competing with us, we immediately drop out.”
The Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, gives the president broad latitude to order the procurement of certain goods from the private sector.
Congressional Democrats have pushed the president to immediately invoke it to ramp up the production of needed supplies.
Mr. Trump spoke as the number of positive U.S. coronavirus cases topped 21,000, with more than 260 coronavirus-related deaths.
He said there is now a sense of national “solidarity” and predicted there would be a celebration of a “great victory” over the virus in the near future.
