3M, Under Attack From White House, Pushes Back --Update
April 03 2020 - 12:23PM
Dow Jones News
By Allison Prang and Austen Hufford
3M Co. pushed back against criticism of its work to make more
N95 masks, intensifying conflict between the Trump administration
and U.S. manufacturers racing to meet urgent demand for medical
equipment.
The St. Paul, Minn.-based company said Friday that it had raised
domestic mask production, started imports from its plant in China
and taken action on reports of price-gouging for those products.
The company said it had refused a Trump administration request to
stop exporting some of its U.S.-made masks to Canada and Latin
America. President Trump on Thursday invoked the Defense Production
Act to force 3M Co. to manufacture as many N95 masks as Federal
Emergency Management Agency determines are needed.
"The idea that we're not doing everything we can to maximize
deliveries of respirators in our home country, nothing is further
from the truth," Chief Executive Mike Roman said on CNBC.
3M is the latest company to draw criticism from Mr. Trump over
its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Health workers
across the country are running short on N95 masks -- so-called
because they block 95% of very small particles -- as well as face
shields, gowns and the ventilators used to treat the sickest
patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
The president criticized General Motors Co. last month for not
working fast enough to make ventilators. GM executives were
surprised by the criticism and felt the company was being unfairly
targeted, people familiar with their thinking told The Wall Street
Journal. The company emphasized the extent of it efforts to
administration officials, a person familiar with the matter said,
and the president changed his tone changed a couple days later,
saying the auto maker is doing a "fantastic job."
Mr. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era
national-security mobilization law, against GM last week.
A Florida official told Fox News that the state couldn't get
masks because 3M was selling them to other countries that were
paying a higher price. Mark Cuban, in an interview with Bloomberg
News, also criticized 3M's distributors as "making as much money as
they possibly can" from selling the masks.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump tweeted that his administration "hit 3M
hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks."
3M defended its mask pricing in its Friday statement.
"We are working with the U.S. Attorney General and attorneys
general of every state, making it clear that 3M has not and will
not raise prices for respirators and offering our assistance in the
fight," the company said.
The company said the Trump administration also asked that it
stop exporting N95 respirators it makes in the U.S. to Latin
America and Canada, but that "there are...significant humanitarian
implications" to doing so.
"Ceasing all export of respirators produced in the United States
would likely cause other countries to retaliate and do the same, as
some have already done," 3M said Friday. "If that were to occur,
the net number of respirators being made available to the United
States would actually decrease."
There was no immediate comment from the White House on 3M's
response. The company had also said that it was looking forward to
working under the framework of the order to expand its response
efforts further.
"We will continue to maximize the amount of respirators we can
produce on behalf of U.S. health-care workers, as we have every
single day since this crisis began," 3M said.
3M has doubled production of masks in recent months. But Mr.
Roman recently told The Wall Street Journal that "the demand we
have exceeds our production capacity."
3M also said in its statement that China approved the company
exporting 10 million of its N95 respirators that were made in China
to the U.S.
Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com and Austen
Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 03, 2020 12:08 ET (16:08 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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