President Donald Trump once again is bowing to corporate America and vacillating on using the full force of the law to save American lives.
Two hours after the White House issued a statement announcing President Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act, directing General Motors to produce ventilators (quantity, timeline, and cost not announced), Trump is again backtracking – for the second time in as many hours.
After the White House press statement, Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I’ve enacted the Act, we’ve used it three of four times.” That’s false. He had never officially used the law.
“We did activate it with respect to General Motors,” he continued, announcing he has ordered the car company to produce ventilators. He added, “maybe we won’t need the full activation we’ll find out.”
That’s not how the law works.
And now, at his daily coronavirus press conference, Trump again backtracked.
“This invocation of the DPA should demonstrate clearly to all that we will not hesitate to use the full authority of the federal government to combat this crisis. We thought we had a deal for example with General Motors and I guess they thought otherwise. They didn’t agree, and now they do, they do agree, and I think we might be able to pull it,” he said, referring to his direction under the DPA to GM to make ventilators.
Proving he has no intention of actually using the law, Trump scolded the $137 billion multinational corporation: “We let them know how we felt, and they can’t be doin’ that.”
It is unclear if Trump will actually use the law, as intended, to mandate GM produce the life-saving equipment. There appears to be no contract, no order, no number of ventilators to be produced, nor at what cost. There also appears to be no specifications, and no timeline as to how many are to be delivered when.
UPDATE:
Minutes later, talking about ventilators being made, Trump says, “Hopefully General Motors will join the fray.”
He did not explain why he said “hopefully.”
Later, Trump explains that he doesn’t want to “get ripped off on price,” then says: “So General Motors, we’ll see what happens.”