President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has been wrecking the federal government’s task force working on securing and distributing the medical supplies needed to fight the Coronavirus pandemic — which shouldn’t be too surprising, since like the president himself, Kushner had no relevant experience whatsoever before assuming his present position. According to a new report from NBC, the White House’s supply chain task force, which Kushner has assumed at least some control over, has been operating with virtually zero oversight amidst decision-making that’s apparently included “highlights” like spending potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money to assist DuPont in the production of personal protective equipment that they’ve then sold to interests other than the feds themselves.
It’s a consistent theme — Kushner and the Trump administration at large have been prioritizing support for big business including plenty of their own contacts above securing the needed supplies as efficiently as possible using previously existing government methods.
NBC reports:
‘There is virtually no accountability for their decisions about how and where to allocate emergency equipment, a vacuum that has produced strong criticism from Democratic congressional officials, who are demanding answers. The story of the supply-chain group… is one of chaos, secrecy and ineptitude, these officials said.’
One official identified as a “senior government official involved in the response effort” told NBC:
‘Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing. It cost weeks.’
That “own thing” included their decision to end the “long-running practice of using [FEMA’s] regional offices to find, pay for and acquire goods from smaller local vendors in an emergency,” and that practice would, of course, help improve the efficiency of the process, which is a crucial priority amidst a situation like the Coronavirus pandemic. The deals with big companies like DuPont that have replaced that process have been costly.
DuPont ordinarily ships its patented material Tyvek to Vietnam for assembly into body suits that can be used as the needed personal protective equipment in a public health emergency. NBC explains:
‘It usually takes up to three months to ship the material to Vietnam, where it is sewn into body suits, and get it back. When the federal government offered to pay for chartered flights to reduce the round trip for 750,000 items to 10 days, DuPont agreed. Then DuPont sold 60 percent of the protective equipment, commonly called PPE, to Uncle Sam while keeping 40 percent for its other customers.’
That means that the federal government ended up with around 450,000 of the suits — which reportedly have been going for up to $15 a piece, which is three times their pre-Coronavirus pandemic price. As for the flights that Kushner’s team apparently helped orchestrate to get the material to their assembly place and back, an anonymous senior government official said that the chartered flights could cost up to $1 million apiece — although the government has access to similarly equipped planes from the Defense Department that cost about $10,000 an hour to use. In other words — Kushner’s work to secure the supply chain has turned into a spectacle of big spending in the name of… what exactly? Political expedience?
Kushner’s failures don’t just have political consequences. Debacles like his insistence that states shouldn’t actually rely on the federal stockpile of supplies — what else is it there for? — have helped leave localities around the country struggling to secure lifesaving supplies weeks and months into the pandemic.
