Mismanagement and miscommunication by President Donald Trump and his top advisors have reportedly hamstrung the construction of tens of thousands of sorely needed ventilators.
The White House this week abruptly canceled a planned $1.5 billion agreement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to buy as many as 80,000 of the breathing devices from a new partnership between General Motors and the medical device manufacturer Ventec Life Systems.
Despite public statements earlier this week that he had given U.S. automakers a “go-ahead” to start making ventilators, Trump and senior administration officials began fretting over the deal’s price tag, according to The New York Times.
The president and top advisors worried that GM and Ventec would not be able to deliver enough ventilators. The companies’ projections for the first run of production fell from 20,000 ventilators to 7,500. However, at the same time, the White House and federal officials also feared that the federal government would end up with a surplus of the devices.
The estimated $1.5 billion cost – about $18,000 per ventilator – amounts to 0.075% of the $2 trillion relief package passed by the Senate early Thursday. As the Times pointed out, it’s also roughly the cost of just 18 F-35 fighter jets.
Ventilators are in severely short supply as the number of cases of coronavirus, or COVID-19, have soared. State officials and medical workers across the country have cheered the arrival of even a handful of ventilators, let alone a few hundred or several thousand.
Last week, GM became the first automaker to publicly acknowledge that it was considering joining efforts to help make ventilators and other devices. Ford and Tesla have since taken similar steps. All three automakers, and many others, had halted their assembly lines to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
While Trump has implied that he had given automakers permission to start making ventilators, the companies do not need White House sign-off to make the devices. However, companies are seeking some assurance that there will be a clear buyer for the ventilators that they build – especially manufacturers such as GM, Ford and Tesla that don’t normally build medical devices, and which will need weeks to either reconfigure current factories or invest in new facilities.
The FEMA deal would provide such assurance to GM and Ventec. However, Trump has refrained from taking similar steps on a broader scale, namely implementing the provision of the Defense Production Act of 1950 that would allow federal officials to direct private industries to begin making certain goods – here, amid the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic, ventilators, respirators, face masks and face shields to alleviate severe shortages in the equipment. Yet while Trump has said that the Act “is in full force,” these provisions have not been instituted – further slowing ventilator production.
The Trump administration says it is now considering competing deals.
An analyst at JP Morgan is predicting massive future growth for Apple in its music and gaming divisions — to the tune of more than $8 billion in revenue by 2025. Cheddar News anchors Kristen Scholer and Hena Doba discuss the glowing forecast for the tech giant.
Catching you up on today’s top headlines with Bitcoin falling below $24,000, U.S. gas prices reaching above $5 on average, Tesla shareholders voting on a 3-for-1 stock split, and more.
On this episode of On The Job presented by ADP: Gemma Burgess, CEO of Ferguson Partners, explains what people are looking for in an employer, and how to convey positive work culture to potential employees; Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Performance Acceleration at The Marcus Buckingham Company, an ADP company, breaks down how encouraging employee engagement and empowering employee voices can benefit every workplace and busts a myth about employee engagement while working from home; Jim Huether, CEO of Hyperice, discusses Hyperice's new employee mental health initiative, known as the Workplace Alliance, with 100-plus companies to combat the ongoing mental health crisis and how they're taking a hands-on, data-driven approach to the mental health crisis.
Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Performance Acceleration at The Marcus Buckingham Company, an ADP company, joins Cheddar to discuss how encouraging employee engagement and empowering employee voices can benefit every workplace and busts a myth about employee engagement while working from home.
Jim Huether, CEO of Hyperice, joins Cheddar to discuss Hyperice's new employee mental health initiative, known as the Workplace Alliance, with 100-plus companies to combat the ongoing mental health crisis and how they're taking a hands-on, data-driven approach to the mental health crisis.
Consumer prices saw an 8.6 percent jump in May, with fuel prices showing the biggest surge, climbing 17 percent last month. As inflation continues to climb to levels not seen in 40 years, President Biden took to calling out ExxonMobil and other major oil companies, accusing them of holding back production while continuing to collect huge profits at the cost of the consumer. Mark Avallone, the president of Potomac Wealth Advisors, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss. “They have reduced long-term expenditures. But why? Because the world is going to alternative energy and as consumers, if we thought that that welcome change to alternatives was going to happen without pain, we might have been mistaken," he said. "The less investment they make in oil because they're getting ready for a new world of electric vehicles, the less we're going to be prepared for oil shocks such as the one we got when Russia invaded Ukraine."
Catching you up on the stories you need to know this morning, the U.S. could soon get its first major gun safety law in years, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. capitol holds its second hearing, and today might just be the day the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, and decides on new gun laws.
