Current Events > Trump Refused to Order Coronavirus Supplies Because Big Business Complained

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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/defense-production-act-coronavirus-trump-respirators-masks-ventilators.html

President Trumps reluctance to use the Defense Production Act has been one of the most enduring mysteries of the coronavirus epidemic. The Defense Production Act is a 1950 law allowing the federal government to redirect vital industry for use in a crisis (primarily a war, but an epidemic would also do). Hospitals are desperately short of ventilators and respirators, and governors, doctors, and public-health officials have begged Trump to invoke the act to direct emergency production before hospital staff gets infected and patients begin dying.

Trumps diffidence is puzzling, given his normal tendency to push presidential authority to, or well past, its constitutional limits. This is a president who claimed national-security powers to slap tariffs on steel from Canada and Mexico, and to build a border fence.

The New York Times resolves the mystery. Trump has refused to invoke the act because big business doesnt want him to. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the heads of major corporations have lobbied the administration against using the act, the Times reports. They say the move could prove counterproductive, imposing red tape on companies precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories. Trump, Lawrence Kudlow, and Jared Kushner all reportedly found these arguments persuasive.

Of course, persuading that troika does not necessarily require a solid factual basis. Kudlow is a fanatical adherent of supply-side economics whose career of wrongness has been sustained by a willingness to advance the narrow interests of the superrich. Kushner is a dilettante heir to his fathers shady construction empire. Trump is also that, but less intelligent than Kushner.

And people still support this weak excuse for a leader

article seems kinda biased, idk

Bitch ass president.

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I really hope the next administration puts charges on him

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Kaiganeer posted...

article seems kinda biased, idk

Being biased against Trump is the correct position to have
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butthole666 posted...

I really hope the next administration puts charges on him

hopefully doubtful but new york will

Why can't *he* get the virus instead of the thousands of innocents?

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of course his mindless supporters will continue to worship him because they dont care that he is an awful leader and moroncas long as he keeps being a racist

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