An increasing chorus is demanding President Trump utilize a law that few had heard of before the past few weeks — the Defense Production Act — to solve the critical shortage of medical equipment that threatens to turn the covid-19 pandemic into an even bigger catastrophe. While Democrats have insisted upon such action, medical professions have joined the calls, as have average Americans amid pictures on social media of doctors and fashion designers sewing masks.
Under pressure, the president signed an executive order delegating power under the act to the Department of Health and Human Services, but has resisted putting its powers into full effect. When asked Wednesday why he had not, the president deflected that “governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work and they are doing a lot of this work. The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know,” he shrugged, “we’re not a shipping clerk.”
Yet American history shows that in times of crisis, one of the most vital powers of the federal government is precisely to coordinate resources and ensure critical needs are met. Today, the Defense Production Act remains one of the most potent legal tools — maybe the only tool — to help the government serve that obligation and make sure our medical professionals have the tools they need.
The Defense Production Act was a product of the early Cold War. In earlier 20th century conflicts, the economically decentralized United States cobbled together wartime mobilization regimes after crises had already begun. These trial-and-error efforts often struggled to meet the scale that emergencies required.
During World War I, the Wilson administration assembled a confusing assortment of ad hoc agencies to handle what was increasingly known as the science of logistics: the War Industries Board to coordinate corporate production with Army needs, the Food Administration to ensure troops overseas didn’t march on empty stomachs, the Fuel Administration to ensure availability of coal, oil and natural gas, and, critically, the Railroad Administration, under Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, to nationalize the nation’s hopelessly dysfunctional transportation network.
The wartime mobilization problems the United States faced were rarely about actual productive capacity and instead about distribution — there was no national shipping clerk. In the winter of 1917-18, a clogged network of railroad cars owned and operated by scores of competing companies prevented coal from moving from where it sat in abundance to where it was desperately needed. Americans in the freezing northeast lacked fuel to heat their homes.