WASHINGTON—Fox News aired a report on Thursday evening in which a Florida official accused 3M executives of deciding “not to put America first” in the COVID-19 pandemic by selling protective face masks to “foreign countries” ahead of the United States. “It’s criminal what’s happening,” he said.That night, avid Fox viewer Donald Trump invoked the wartime powers of the Defense Production Act to, as he tweeted, “hit 3M hard” on the issue of N95 respirator masks. On Friday morning, 3M announced that the U.S. president’s order would hit Canada hard, too. “The Administration also requested that 3M cease exporting respirators that we currently manufacture in the United States to the Canadian and Latin American markets,” it said, noting that there would be “significant humanitarian implications” to complying with it.Trump confirmed the request at a news conference Friday evening, saying the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be working “to prevent the export of N95 respirators, surgical masks, gloves and other protective equipment. “We need these items immediately for domestic use,” Trump said. “We have to have ’em.”The implications extend beyond 3M: as a spokesperson for Public Service and Procurement Minister Anita Anand told the Star, the same kind of policy could apply “to potentially all supplies.” Think ventilators. Think vaccines. After more than three decades of integrating the Canadian economy with that of the U.S., the risk has never been clearer. If the mostly symbolic fuss over the U.S. briefly considering militarizing the border last week was a fire drill, this is a full-on emergency alarm indicating an impending inferno. This isn’t a cautionary tale about the dangers of globalized trade — it’s the worst-case scenario, playing out in real time.Sharing ...
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