President Donald Trump at the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti, Mich., with General Motors CEO Mary Barra in 2017. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s decision followed a series of tweets critical of General Motors pace for producing ventilators to address COVID-19 pandemic
The order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “use any and all authority” to require GM to “accept, perform and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators.”
In a statement, Trump said negotiations “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. GM was wasting time.”
“General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!! FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!!” he tweeted, referring to a GM plant in northeast Ohio that the company sold to an electric truck manufacturer in 2019.
Trump lambasted the company as well in a second tweet where he said GM was falling short of its promises to deliver.
“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out. 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. Always a mess with Mary B,” Trump tweeted, referring to GEO CEO Mary Barra.
The tweets came after the New York Times reported Thursday that the Trump administration had balked at the $1 billion price tag to build as many as 80,000 ventilators to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
And they came hours after Trump, speaking on Fox News, suggested the demand for ventilators was overblown.
“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” he said. “You know, you’re going to major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?”
But all three have vowed to help during the pandemic.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, is using a plant in China to make face masks for first responders and health care workers in North America, with the goal of producing 1 million masks per month in the coming weeks, which they’ll donate to police, EMTs, firefighters, and health care workers in hospitals and clinics.
Navy Vet
Article URL : https://www.rollcall.com/2020/03/27/trump-blasts-gm-over-ventilator-production-to-combat-the-coronavirus/