Pandemic? Alright for some (2)

Manufacturers of medical face-masks are  making huge profits supplying to whoever can pay the most and pay fastest.

The scramble for face masks has created a “madhouse” atmosphere among Chinese manufacturers, who are making huge profits as customers around the world fight to be the first in line. Producers of masks and respirators are demanding to be paid in full before the products leave their factories and are supplying whoever can pay the most and pay fastest.

Michael Crotty, a textile broker based in Shanghai, of Golden Pacific Fashion and Design, said he had spent all of Sunday dealing with a flood of new enquiries from US states, national governments, cities, hospitals, distributors and private companies seeking to protect their employees.

 “Money talks. The factory knows one thing: what’s in my bank account and when did it get there? And if it gets there before the other guy then that’s who is going to get the production time.” Factories that have quickly changed their production lines to make masks are demanding 50% payment when an order is made and the other 50% before the masks leave the factory. With scams proliferating, those are often unacceptable terms to many buyers, especially those spending government money. “The factory doesn’t care,” Crotty said. “They’re getting orders from people they’ve never heard of before. It’s a really unusual circumstance to have these factories absolutely in the driver’s seat. And they’re in the driving seat not of a Volkswagen but of a Mercedes limousine.”

French and German officials blamed the US last week for using “wild west” tactics to outbid them, but Crotty said the outbidding appeared to be an all-against-all affair. Over the weekend authorities in Berlin withdrew a claim that the US had “seized” a shipment of 200,000 respirator masks ordered for the city’s police force, a claim that led to an accusation of “modern piracy” from Berlin’s state interior minister, Andreas Geisel. According to Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, they were outbid while the respirators were in transit at Bangkok airport. The Berlin authorities say it is unclear where they went and who the ultimate buyer was.

Trump invoked the Federal Production Act, which dates back to the Korean war era and has given the administration the right to use “any and all authority” to procure the protective equipment it needs.

“We need the masks. We don’t want other people getting it,” Trump said in a Saturday briefing to reporters. “That’s why we’re instituting[the defence production act. You could call it retaliation because that’s what it is: it’s a retaliation. If people don’t give us what we need for our people, we’re going to be very tough.”

US manufacturer 3M said that cutting off supplies of protective equipment to Canada and Latin America could cause a humanitarian crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/market-for-chinese-made-masks-is-a-madhouse-says-broker