One of the world’s largest U.S. based makers of consumer products – 3M – says it has been told by the White House to stop exporting medical-grade face masks to the Canadian market.
The Minneapolis-based company welcomes the Trump administration’s use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to order domestic companies to produce critically needed medical infrastructure to fight COVID-19, but there are also some issues.
“There are, however, significant humanitarian implications of ceasing respirator supplies to health-care workers in Canada and Latin America, where we are a critical supplier of respirators,” the company said in a statement.
3M also warns that any such move could backfire on the U.S. and impact the supply of masks and other medical equipment.
“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,” noted 3M.
“If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually decrease. That is the opposite of what we and the administration, on behalf of the American people, both seek.”
Speaking on Friday morning, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that 3M could defy such an order.
“3M has indicated that it understands how important it is to continue with delivering on orders to places like Canada,” Trudeau said. “That’s because there is much trade that goes back and forth in essential services and it could end up hurting Americans as much as it hurts anybody else.”
Trudeau notes he has also warned U.S. officials that the trade of critical medical supplies goes both ways across the Canada U.S. border.
In a previous statement, 3M says it doubled global production of masks to 1.1 billion per year, or 100 million each month, including 35 million per month manufactured in the United States alone.