President Trump, 3M deal will help deliver 166 million respirator masks to the U.S.
President Donald Trump, White House officials, and 3M have come to an agreement to bring approximately 166 million masks to America in the next three months. Yahoo Finance’s Jess Smith breaks down the most recent developments.
Video Transcript
- Right now, we're going to check in with Jessica Smith in Washington on the latest on stimulus, because there is already concern, Jess, that the Paycheck Protection Program, which was just rolled out on Friday, might run out of money.
JESS SMITH: Yeah, and we have just learned that the Senate is going to try and approve more funding for that program on Thursday of this week. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out a statement saying that Congress needs to act with speed and total focus to provide more money for the program. He says, it's quickly becoming clear that Congress will need to provide more funding or the crucial program may run dry. Senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter earlier that the program could need between $200 AND $250 billion more.
So it looks like Congress will start to start this process of getting that program more money on Thursday. Of course, they are not in Washington right now, so they have to do this by voice vote or by unanimous consent. And we did also just hear from the House Republican leader so on the House side saying that he spoke with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and the House will move swiftly, as the Senate will, to approve more money for this program. So still working to get details, but it looks like between $200 and $250 billion dollars more for small businesses could be on the way.
- Yeah, and we have bank CEOs who are going to be meeting at the White House this afternoon at 3:00, because we've heard a lot of reports that the rollout has been somewhat rocky thus far. In other news, the administration has come to an agreement with the manufacturer, 3M. They have been sort of bickering with the company-- or the president really have been critical of the company about providing respirator masks and about exporting them. Now 3M is going to be importing them on a monthly basis.
JESS SMITH: Right. President Trump announced a deal between the administration and 3M yesterday after, as you mentioned, that kind of public dispute. According to the terms of this new deal, the president says that 3M will be importing 166.5 million additional masks to the US over the next three months. And 3M will continue to export masks to Canada, to Latin America. That had been a point of contention. The administration didn't want 3M to be exporting those masks when they could be helping in the US.
But now President Trump said this 3M saga ends very happily. The additional mask will supplement the 35 million that 3M produces in the US each month. So hopefully, this will help with the supply issues that we've seen on these masks that have been so critical throughout this coronavirus crisis.
