Trump faces off with General Motors over ventilators

Yahoo Finance's Sibile Marcellus discusses General Motors' move to produce ventilators with Ventec, after President Trumo tweeted in part "As usual with “this” General Motors, things just never seem to work out."

Video Transcript

- Earlier this afternoon, we had Ventech life systems and GM announcing a partnership to mass produce ventilators as a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now this news comes in the wake of President Trump taking aim at many of the automakers, including GM. So it's interesting.

He made this a tweet-- or he tweeted this out earlier today. And he said, "As usual with 'this' General Motors, things that just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed ventilators 'very quickly.' Now they are saying it will only be 6,000 in late April, and they want top dollar. Always in mess with Mary B." He's talking about the CEO. "Invoke 'P.'"

Now, "Invoke 'P,'" wasn't immediately clear to everybody out there. But he cleared it up in his second tweet that he put out, saying that it's invoking the Defense Production Act.

And I want to bring in Sibile Marcellus to talk more about this. Because Sibile, it's interesting here, the pressure that President Trump is putting on GM and Ford when the timeline, just in terms of how quickly they can meet these ventilators, is still really in question.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: That's right, President Trump putting maximum pressure on GM and Ford and basically putting them on blast for all Americans to see. And President Trump criticized GM for saying that they said they were going to have 40,000 ventilators. But then they were asking for more money. And it was actually going to be 6,000 ventilators by April.

So president Trump also put out this other tweet where he said, "General Motors must immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio or some other plant and start making ventilators now." There are so many exclamation points there, [? Shauna. ?] And then he says, "Ford, get going on ventilators fast."

So since President Trump has sent that tweet, we've seen both Ford and GM defend themselves, put out press releases, get their message out to the press that they are on it. They are working on it. And they're trying to get masks and ventilators to hospitals.

So what GM is said is that they're building these ventilators at the Kokoma, Indiana manufacturing plant. And also, they're making these masks.

And Ford also defended themselves saying basically that they've been sending face shields to hospitals and law enforcement agencies, including the NYPD. Now, the "New York Times" came out with a report saying that what GM and Ventech were asking for was more than a billion dollars to make these ventilators, and that they were asking for hundreds of million dollars upfront to GM so they can retool their plant in Kokoma, Indiana.

But that's where things are right now. These corporate America-- these manufacturers are trying to get these medical supplies to hospitals.

- Yeah, all right. Well, Sibile, thanks so much for that.