Stop half stepping – enact the Defensive Production Act

Yes, President Trump’s daily egomaniacal press conferences should annoy us, but what should really angry us is the fact that when the president says he’s doing everything he can – under his executive authority – he lies.

As the nation runs out of ventilators, face masks, and basic prescription drugs, federal and state authorities are reduced to paying premium rates to China for insufficient medical material – life-saving goods better used in Asia where the coronavirus enters its second phase.

Trump says American industry is converting over in a crash program to construct the necessary medical devices and drugs to fight the coronavirus, and some companies have valiantly endeavored to fill the breach. Yet, the truth remains that for many companies that could quickly provide these critical breathing apparatuses and prescription drugs, business as usual has trumped the president’s request.

Harry Truman had the same problem during the Korean War. American industry did not step up as it had a decade before, so Congress gave the authority to the president to order businesses to construct that which the national security of the nation demanded, and receive compensation for it. The current president could do the same; however, he has demurred – and patients pay the price.

Over the past two weeks, Mr. Trump has given conflicting signals about the Defense Production Act. After first saying that he was prepared to invoke the law, using its extraordinary powers to force American industries to ensure the availability of critical equipment, he quickly changed course. (Perhaps because he learned that his own company was not complying with his “official” requests.) The next day, he suggested that obtaining medical equipment should be up to individual governors because “we’re not a shipping clerk.”

The president has subsequently argued that he has employed the threat of the law to spur the production of “millions of masks,” without offering evidence or specifics about who was manufacturing them or when they would reach health workers.

A week ago, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Majority leader, said that he was left with the impression after talking with Mr. Trump that the president had decided to move to put the act into effect. Nothing substantive has happened in the meantime, and both the Empire and Pelican States may run out of respirators this week.

Moreover, the coronavirus appears to prove far more dangerous, and long lasting, than any initially expected. Summer’s warm breezes have not blown away infections as hoped elsewhere. We have discovered that death rates are higher than the Chinese originally admitted, and a lot more Americans could get sick in the next month than any expert ever anticipated.

Even if doctors gain every gizmo that they need, the nation’s medical godfather Dr. Anthony Fauci still believes that we may endure 200,000 deaths. Lacking these critical materials, though, the fatalities could spiral to over 400,000. That amounts to as many people as died during the Second World War. If those potential fatalities are not an argument to mobilize industry, nothing is.

The manifesting virus has proven so virulent that Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, the intellectual father of the ACA, predicted that the nation would have to remain in isolation until June 1. The statistical peak of the virus may not reach its apex until the end of April, weeks later than expected. Therefore, Americans could face almost two months more locked in their homes – alone, and struggling. Over 700,000 of our sequestered sisters and brothers have lost their jobs, perhaps for good. For the nation to run out of medical essentials as well, at such a rate that the private sector’s current commitment cannot match the ability to fulfill them, stands as too much for our citizenry to bear. The president must invoke the Defense Production Act immediately.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper made the point that we were at war against an unseen adversary. When a nation goes to war, it mobilizes its entire economy to fight that conflict. During WWII, American business answered that call unreservedly. When the Nazis and the Japanese threatened, FDR told General Motors to make tanks. They did, but during the Korean War, they ignored Truman. So the federal government made them assume a war time footing. That law – and that power, as a result – sits at Trump’s disposal. Is it so unreasonable, as America faces casualties which could exceed deaths in every war ever fought, for the president to order U.S. industry to make respirators, face masks, and necessary prescription drugs?

They are the bullets and howitzers of this war.

This article originally published in the April 6, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.