Trump Orders GM To Make Ventilators—10 Days After Company Says It Started Making Them

Topline: President Trump ordered General Motors on Friday to make ventilators for U.S. hospitals treating COVID-19 patients through a 1950’s wartime act⁠—but the company says it was already rushing to make the devices, the latest development in a weeks-long drama as officials rang alarm bells that ventilator shortages could lead to a higher death toll.

  • GM started working on ventilators 12 days ago, the Associated Press reported, by teaming up with Ventec, a small, Seattle-based producer of the devices.
  • According to supply chain experts, GM’s ability to speed up Ventec’s manufacturing process and dramatically increase its output is a lightning fast turnaround in that amount of time.
  • GM and Ventec expect to ramp up production to 10,000 ventilators per month by mid-April, according to the AP.
  • Trump, however, blasted GM on Twitter Friday for allegedly making a smaller number of ventilators than promised, and wanting “top dollar” for them; by Sunday, the president was praising the company in a Rose Garden press briefing.
  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been one of Trump’s sharpest critics in not getting enough ventilators to meet hospitals’ needs: “You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators,” he said Tuesday.
  • Trump pushed back during a Friday appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, saying “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” and that “You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators.”

Big number: 960,000. That’s how many U.S. coronavirus patients could need ventilators, according to one estimate from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Crucial quote: “That is lightning-fast speed to secure suppliers, learn how the products work, and make space in their manufacturing plant,” Kaitlin Wowak, an industrial supply chain professor at the University of Notre Dame told the AP about GM’s ventilator production effort. “You can’t get much faster than that.”

Key background: Governors and healthcare officials have been calling for tens of thousands of ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients, but the AP reported that the U.S. may not have enough to go around. Hospitals that don’t have enough ventilators could put healthcare workers in the position of choosing which patients get to breathe, and which do not. This shortage of ventilators, along with other medical equipment such as masks, ramped up calls from state officials, medical professionals and over 100 former national security officials for Trump to use the Defense Production Act to make more. It’s a 1950’s wartime law that gives the federal government the power to order manufacturers to make supplies for national defense. But Ventec, GM’s partner, does not have confirmation from the Trump administration on which ventilator the government wants to buy, at what quantity, and at what price, according to the New York Times




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