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Experts say the law can be used more actively to protect medical supplies, yet the Trump administration’s reluctance has left states and medical providers in “chaos.”
By Aishvarya Kavi
WASHINGTON – Experts, medical staff and elected officials are renewing their call to the Trump administration to intensify the use of the defense production law to protect critical medical supplies.
In March, as the coronavirus pandemic settled in the United States and tension was rising in cities and states, President Trump used the law to pressure General Motors and start generating fanatics. But four months later, frustrated by what they describe as a lack of federal leadership in the face of persistent scarcity, critics say the Trump administration is exercising the law to the extent it can and should.
“What the federal government – the president or secretaries with delegated powers – has still done is use the DPA to create a permanent, sustainable and redundant national source chain for everything similar to the pandemic: evidence, swabs, N95 masks, etc.” said Jamie Baker, a former National Security Council legal aid and professor of national security law at Syracuse University.
“I’m frustrated that there doesn’t seem to be a national strategy,” said Larry Hall, who retired in August as program director of the Defense Production Act at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Why doesn’t this management use the law to unsusaba?”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, however, at a briefing of the White House’s Coronavirus Working Group last week, Vice President Mike Pence said the administration proceeded to the paintings to provide states with the essential supplies. “The federal government’s ability to respond to this pandemic is particularly greater than it was two and three months ago,” he said.
The Defense Production Act provides the federal government with a variety of governments, such as offering loans to develop a supplier’s capacity, controlling the distribution of a company’s products, and, rather than not, requiring corporations to prioritize government orders over other customers, meaning government is necessarily at the forefront.
Since taking office, Trump has used Korean War-era law to acquire defense equipment, but has resisted doing so in the early days of the pandemic. States and health care providers continue to compete for unequally distributed life-saving supplies, as they did months ago.
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