dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

'DPA

Q Mr. President, when it comes to the Defense Production Act, we know that governors across the country all day today were pleading with you to utilize the DPA, saying that they need it —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it depends which. It depends which governors you’re talking about.

Q — specifically for that allocation piece that you mentioned, Mr. Navarro.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q Why not use is now if that would answer their pleas for help?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we are using it now. The fact that I signed it, it’s in effect. But, you know, we’re a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela; ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out. Not too well. The concept of nationalizing our business is not a good concept.

But I’ll tell you why — as Peter said, we may have to use it someplace along the chain, but we’re getting calls. Here’s the beauty of it: If we go out and we want, let’s say, masks, we don’t know who to call on masks. But Hanes, who makes things of cotton — various elements, lots of things; it’s a great company — they called us and they said, “We’re going to make millions of masks.”

We got a call today from 3M — there’s a big article today — the head of 3M — they’re going to make tremendous products, and they’re more or less in that business. And if they’re not — like, for instance, General Motors spoke to us; Ford spoke to us about doing ventilators.

The beauty is, they’re calling us. If you go the national route — nationalization route — we’re going to tell a company to make a ventilator; they don’t even know what a ventilator is. In the case of one company, they used to make them years ago and they know how to make them. You know, it’s a very complex piece of equipment, frankly.

So what we’re doing is — I think Peter said it maybe better than anybody is going to say it. We have the threat of doing it, if we need it. We may have to use it somewhere along the supply chain, in a minor way. But we have millions of masks being done. We have respirators. We have ventilators. We have a lot of things happening right now. So just the threat of using it.

But using it’s actually a big deal. I mean, when this was announced, it sent tremors through our business community and through our country because, basically, what are you doing? You’re talking about — you’re going to nationalize an industry or you’re going to nationalize — you’re going to take away companies. You’re going to tell companies what to do.

The truth is, most people — nobody would know where to start. There are companies out there, that you wouldn’t think of, that have called us, that say, “We can do ventilators. We used to do them years ago.” And they can do them in large quantities. Other comp- — if I call companies and say, “You build ventilators,” they don’t even know what a ventilator is.

So it’s really working out very well. One of the reasons I read the numbers to you is because we’ve given vast numbers of just about everything. We’ve taken it out of our supply — out of our supply, and we’re restocking our supply.

But we’re really backing up the governors. The governors have to go out, do their things. And you have a lot of governors — they’ve done a fantastic job. You have some that haven’t. Usually, it’s the ones that complain that have the problems.

But we’ve had a great relationship, as an example, with Governor Cuomo, with Governor Newsom. We’ve had a great relationship with the State of Washington. Those are the three hotbeds. Those are three hotbeds.

Now, we’re also dealing with other states, as the Admiral said yesterday. We’re dealing with all of the states, actually, in one form or another. Some are very — affected in a very minor way, where you have two people or three people. And I don’t even mean deaths; I mean, literally, cases.

And that’s different than New York, where you have, you know, tremendous — where everybody — I lived there for a long time. Everybody is extremely close, tight. And you have a lot of cases in New York. You have a lot of cases in New York.

And we’re helping Governor Cuomo. We’re helping Governor Newsom. They’ve been — frankly, they’ve been total gentlemen. They want to get it done and we want to get it done.

But doing — doing it the way we’re doing it is much better. It’s really much better.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-8/