President Trump announced on Friday that he has invoked the Defense Production Act in order to get General Motors to begin producing ventilators. According to the report, GM refused to begin producing the much needed ventilators because they could not agree on a price with the ventilator company. GM then agreed to only produce 6,000 of the nearly 40,000 ventilators they promised during negotiations. President Trump then stepped and invoked the DPA stating: “the fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course.”
NEW: President Trump announces he has implemented the Defense Production Act to “require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators.”
He adds, “GM was wasting time.” pic.twitter.com/F51VHSL18B — Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 27, 2020
Shortly after the executive order, GM announced that it has come to a deal with the ventilator company to produce the product at cost.
We know that there is a global backorder of critical care ventilators. We’re committed to doing every thing we can to help — including donating our resources at cost to support the fight against COVID-19. https://t.co/34Here89Fa
— General Motors (@GM) March 27, 2020
They then tweeted that they will have the ability to deliver more than 10,000 ventilators by next month.
Our teams have been working tirelessly with @MyVOCSN to produce critical care ventilators at our Kokomo, IN facility. Retooling is underway and we are poised to deliver the first ventilators next month with capacity of more than 10,000 monthly. https://t.co/34Here89Fa pic.twitter.com/vxZvSzHveb
— General Motors (@GM) March 27, 2020
During a press conference held late Friday, reporters asked the president whether he truly believed that 40,000 ventilators were truly needed, to which the president replied that the hope is we will not need that many but if we have extra, we can send them to our friends in other countries who are unable to produce them.