- Three million N95 masks that had been ordered by the state of Massachusetts were confiscated in the port of New York.
- A shipment of 35,000 N95 masks headed for New Jersey was commandeered by the federal government.
- A shipment of 200,000 N95 masks headed for Germany were confiscated by the U.S. in Bangkok.
- Masks that France had ordered from China were bought for three to four times the going rate by the United States as they waited to be loaded onto cargo planes.
- A shipment of 20 ventilators ordered by the government of Barbados was seized by U.S. authorities.
Those are simply the cases that have been reported. Given the scope of these examples, it is safe to assume that there are others. Andreas Geisel, Berlin’s interior minister, suggested that what we are witnessing are acts of “modern-day piracy.” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said that states are competing in a “global jungle.”
In some of the cases listed above, it is unclear whether the U.S. government or a private entity confiscated the materials. But given the way that Jared Kushner has intermingled the roles of public and private enterprise, that could be a distinction without a difference. The real question comes down to what Kushner plans to do with these supplies. Continue reading.