US allies denounce country's strong-arm tactics to procure masks for coronavirus fight

[Judi Lynn]

Source: France 24



Issued on: 04/04/2020 - 17:55
Modified: 04/04/2020 - 17:59

From Europe to South America, U.S. allies are complaining about the superpower's "Wild West" tactics in outbidding or blocking shipments to buyers who have already signed deals for vital medical supplies.

In France and Germany, senior officials said the United States was paying far above the market price for medical-grade masks from No. 1 producer China, on occasion winning contracts through higher bids even after European buyers believed a deal was done, and Brazil's health minister reported a similar incident.

"Money is irrelevant. They pay any price because they are desperate," one high-level official in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling CDU/CSU group told Reuters.

. . .

U.S.-listed multinational 3M Co said Friday that the White House had ordered it to stop all shipments to Canada and Latin America of respirators that it manufactures in the United States, despite what 3M called “significant humanitarian implications.”


Read more: https://www.france24.com/en/20200404-us-allies-denounce-country-s-strong-arm-tactics-to-procure-masks-for-coronavirus-fight

[Hoyt]

1. America First, the hell with everyone else. Not going to play well in the future.

[IronLionZion]

4. Red America First

since the asshole administration is outbidding blue states on this too.

[denvine]

2. One of the first things our Democratic President needs to do

is to go on a world apology tour and repair our relationship with our allies. It's amazing how one orange f#%kface can do so much damage. Of course he has help from the rest of the repug enablers, but he sets the tone. I can't wait to see him behind bars.

[CousinIT]

3. Let's be clear because I'm tired of the misleading headlines.

It's not "the country" doing this. It's TRUMP.

And when we talk about "the government's" bungled, too-little too-late response to this pandemic, it's not "the government" - it's TRUMP.

The orange, corn-silk-tufted nincompoop who gutted the agency tasked with tracking and managing pandemics, and who didn't think it was important to keep our US stockpile maintained so he gutted that, too - has his flying monkeys snatching vital supplies away from every US state and every country on Earth because HE failed to take this virus seriously from the get-go and has since been bungling and making excuses for bungling his response. He's FORCING OUR STATES to have to bid eBay style for every goddamned lifesaving scrap of masks, gowns and ventilators as they compete with other states, Con-man and notorious international criminal Trump, and the rest of the world for them.

NO LEADER with any intelligence, NO leader with any conscience or any single fiber of moral thought would do this TO. HIS. OWN. COUNTRY.

It's as bad or WORSE than gassing your own people. This goddamned sonofabitch belongs in THE HAGUE after this is over and he deserves to ROT destitute and maggot-eaten to death in the worst prison in the planet for what he's done here.

[iluvtennis]

5. + agree, it's trump. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Mexico & Canada did not build plants because of long standing promises from 3M (good guys now)

Canada makes health care gear that we are shipping to the US, even now.

Quite a number of Canadian doctors and nurses and healthcare technicians work in Detroit and live in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Should their services be blocked?

Is Detroit having an outbreak? Maybe more than a little outbreak?

Canada makes the fiber that goes into N95 masks, from a specific kind of cedar.

Should Canada block that fiber now?

No.

But the US should not block medical supplies to Canada.

[DENVERPOPS]

7. Of course money is irrelevant

It's not the Trump Empire's money, its the American people's. Trump never uses his money, always others and then stiffs them. That's what started this whole grifting empire of his. No U.S. bank would lend him money, so he had to go to Doitcha? Bank who lent him all he wanted, the loans were guaranteed by Russian Oligarchs......The more Trillions that Trump borrows, running up our national debt, the more us taxpayers will have to pay down the road......He was tired of playing with his FICTICIOUS BILLIONS, and now he is "wet his pants" ecstatic about being able to play with other peoples TRILLIONS....

My Russian friend here in the U.S. says he talks to his relatives back in Russia, and they say the Russian People are all watching how easily Putin is playing Trump. Putin is blatantly directing this downfall of both the U.S. and it's Democracy and succeeding, and they say he has done it so easily because Trump was/is truly stupid. And Putin is laughing his ass off, at how easy it has been. He hasn't directly confronted the United States and he hasn't had to fire a single missile or rocket to do it........

Thanks to Putin, and his pawn Trump, Putin has made us the laughing stock of the world......

WASF