MINNEAPOLIS _ 3M on Friday said it would work with the government to boost the availability of its respirator masks in the U.S. under the Defense Production Act, but it rejected suggestions by President Donald Trump and others that it was helping higher-paying customers elsewhere ahead of sick Americans.
The Maplewood-based company said it has worked transparently with the Trump administration since February, increased its capacity to make N95 respirator masks and tried to route them to the areas with the most critical needs.
"The narrative that we are not doing everything we can to maximize delivery of respirators in our home country, nothing could be further from the truth," Mike Roman, 3M's chief executive, said Friday on CNBC.
"We are doing everything we can to maximize our efforts and to fight COVID-19 and to support the health care workers here at home in the U.S.," he said.
3M is the world's leading maker of N95 face masks that are sought by medical professionals because they filter out at least 95% of microparticulates. The company makes about 1 billion such masks annually in plants around the world. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, it has said it will double production this year to 2 billion.
Trump on Thursday invoked the Defense Production Act to compel 3M to give priority to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's needs for N95 masks.
He later tweeted: "We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. "P Act" all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing _ will have a big price to pay!"
At the heart of Trump's move is a desire for the firm to restrict its U.S. mask production to American consumption and even ship the masks it makes overseas to the U.S.
3M on Friday expressed concern that Trump's order will force it to cease exporting U.S.-made masks to Canada and Latin America. In some countries, 3M is the only supplier of N95 respirator masks.
The company warned there are "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.
It also said that halting exports of N95 masks may lead other countries where it operates to retaliate by doing the same. "If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually decrease," 3M said.
The company said Trump administration officials last weekend asked it to bring more masks from its overseas factories to the U.S.
Roman said 3M has already begun to do that. For example, China had approved an increase of exports from a 3M factory there and 10 million masks started being shipped this week.
"We've been telling the administration for days and days," Roman said.
He said 3M reacted to the COVID-19 crisis before it hit the U.S. by increasing production in China and in other countries that saw the outbreak first.
In February, the company started working with the administration, laying out all of its manufacturing capacity and any issues in ramping up and shifting its operations.
"We were in constant discussions with them on plans to best produce the masks and will continue to do that," Roman said.
Roman earlier this week said 80% of the 3M masks were going to health care organizations where the crisis was most pronounced and the other 20% were going to federal agencies, chiefly FEMA.
On March 5, Vice President Mike Pence, in charge of the administration's COVID-19 response, came to 3M's headquarters and Roman said they had a "great discussion." Pence praised 3M at the time for "playing a vital role in the health of our nation."
At that point, 90% of the N95 respirators made in the U.S. were going to industrial customers. Now "almost everything" is going toward to health care customers, Roman said.
The administration helped pave the way for that shift more than a month ago with an emergency use authorization allowing those masks to be sold for health care uses. Until then, 3M sold its masks to distributors, which then found customers. With the shift, Roman said, 3M was able to prioritize the distributors' customers to be health care organizations.
3M also said it was continuing to act on reports of price gouging and unauthorized reselling of 3M respirators, working with the U.S. and state attorneys general offices.
Jared Moskowitz, head of Florida's emergency relief efforts, first tweeted that the state couldn't get masks because 3M was selling them at higher prices to customers in other countries. He repeated his assertions Thursday on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
Mark Cuban, in an interview with Bloomberg News, said 3M's distributors were out to make as much money as possible from selling the masks.
"Let me say this," Roman said on CNBC, "the idea that 3M is not doing all it can to fix price gouging and unauthorized reselling is absurd."
