Posted on 04/03/2020 6:53:50 PM PDT by Helicondelta
Protective medical equipment made by US manufacturer 3M and bound for Germany was allegedly intercepted in Thailand and diverted to the US, leading a senior German official to accuse Washington of “modern piracy”.
But 3M, which has come under intense criticism from the White House for producing face masks for overseas customers, said it had “no evidence” to suggest a mask order for the city of Berlin had been seized.
According to the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, the German capital ordered 200,000 special FFP2 and FFP3 masks that are used to protect emergency staff and care workers from infection with coronavirus.
Andreas Geisel, Berlin’s interior minister, confirmed that the consignment had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and never reached Berlin.
3M disputed the account, saying it has “no record of any order of respirators from China for the Berlin police”. German authorities were not available on Friday evening to explain the discrepancy.
The dispute came after the White House tried to force 3M to export masks to the US from its hub in Singapore, part of a growing federal government effort to exert its powers to secure critical medical supplies and gear needed to treat infected patients.
3M this week resisted demands by White House officials to send about 10m N95 respirator masks being produced in Singapore for markets in Asia to the US, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
I understand 3M’s position of not wanting to break contracts to supply their domestic market,but they should step up to not send anymore masks, beyond their contracts, until the country is fully supplied.
Agree. But if you’re an American company and the DPA says you supply the US.....you supply the US.
Meh. Hitler!
I understand the outrage, but it seems a lot of people don’t understand the manufacturer-distributor business model. For the most part once a manufacturer sells product to the distributor it is theirs to sell as they please. That is because the distributor assumes financial risk when they purchase the goods, so they have to have the right to sell them. 3M really cannot control their independent distributors.
There are some limited exceptions, and maybe they have very sophisticated business contracts that might allow 3M the first right to repurchase the goods... but that is not in any typical manufacturer-distributor contract.
The law is the law..
It is rare but there are also certain types of contracts that require the distributors to buy everything that a manufacturer can supply. And there are exclusive contracts, which can sometimes be interpreted as franchises in some states, that would prevent 3M from cutting off their distributors or otherwise discriminating against one or another.
3M like all these treasonist globalists, tries to claim they are a “global” company.
Until it becomes time to get the US Gov’t bailout money.
Then they will be 100% All American !
If they signed that sort of contract, there muscle be an exception made. No country should be denied masks, but the country must be supplied for as well.
The problem is that the President told them he needed all their production for a declared emergency. They went ahead and released them to distributors for distribution as they saw fit. This included distributors in Canada and Mexico. Also their American factories were caught letting foreign cash buyers to the the front of the line.
3m also stated today that they think it was better policy to do worldwide distribution. So they disagreed with the policy, so now, they no longer have a choice.
Maria Bartiromo Questions 3M CEO Mike Roman About Selling Healthcare Masks To Foreign Governments
America first.
First.
That is very simple.
Trump enacted that, as LAW.
Just so nobody gets me wrong, I don’t dispute that the President has some authority to essentially commandeer a facility as needed for a declared national emergency. He did what the country needed.
I was just saying that 3M was in the manufacturer-distributor business model, and probably had some legal responsibility to supply their distributors - who then had the legal right to re-sell the goods in any way they saw fit.
The ethics of it all is a different matter entirely. And if foreign cash buyers were able to step in front of the domestic distributors and/or purchase out from under the US government in this time of need then it is disgusting profiteering. My understanding was that the foreign cash buyers were buying from the distributors, I did not hear they were going direct to the manufacturer. If I was mistaken I accept the correction.
N95 is not FFP3. I have seen they rated FFP2 but it is probably overestimating too.
I agree with you. I think both America and the world can be supplied, but their first responsibility is America.
I dont care what the law says.AMERICA FIRST.
America has the most Coronavirus cases in the entire world.
Forget “and the world”.
America. 100% of all masks now.
Later, they can sell overseas. But right now, 100% to America.
100%.
I understand your point, and am sympathetic. However, the virus will eventually pass, but lost contracts from other countries could end up being forever. Should a company be forced to become 1/10 the size, because it lost access to other countries because it was forced to deny them masks?
I just happened to flick on the TV and saw the CEO of 3M state that they were not involved in this directly, and that they are working with the DOJ to go after their distributors - and their distributor’s re-sellers - who were price gouging (which I took to mean that were taking the highest bid rather than first come first serve).
The cynic in me says that 3M sees an opportunity to get rid of some of their distributors and get cause to terminate some of their contracts. “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.
There is a certain amount of opacity in the manufactuer-distributor model that allows the manufacturer to “look the other way” as it were. I am not accusing 3M or the distributors/resellers of anything specific, just I have a career’s worth of experience in the manufacturer-distributor business model, I’ve read many types of contracts, and been involved (peripherally, but still deep in the weeds behind the scenes) in a number of lawsuits between distributors and manufacturers.
Yep, ramp up production, it is a money making opportunity. To simply deny others a product is not really nice. Everybody was appalled when Chinese were doing it.
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