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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)

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