While countries around the world scramble to find stockpiles of N95s and manufacture more masks, it’s unclear how this shortage will resolve itself. On April 2, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to compel 3M, one of the only companies that manufacturers N95 masks in the US, to ramp up production, according to an article on the Vox website. 

 The president later said in a tweet that 3M “will have a big price to pay” for exporting masks, the article said.

In a statement, 3M said it had gained approval to import 10 million masks from its facilities in China. The company also said the White House’s request to end its exports of N95 respirators had “humanitarian implications of ceasing respirator supplies to healthcare workers in Canada and Latin America.”

 If other countries retaliated by not sharing supplies, 3M argued, the US could soon end up with fewer masks than it had before the DPA order.

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