The DPA is a powerful legislative tool in the US that was first used during the Korean War to align the nation’s production capacity to national needs as a kind of wartime power, according to the United States Studies Centre’s Foreign Policy and Defence research fellow, Brendan Thomas-Noone. But if our health system had become swamped through late March and April as the worst modelling had forewarned and our main population centres took on the frightening scenes of a New York or Madrid, the long arm of the DPA would have put a wrinkle in the Australia-US relationship. It is perhaps an academic argument now that Australia has successfully managed the early stage of the pandemic. In fact, the company was specifically named in Donald Trump’s Executive Orders related to the Defense Production Act of April 2. ResMed is listed on the ASX but is domiciled in the United States, and is covered by the DPA. Australian’s are rightfully proud of ResMed, which was founded here and makes best-in-class ventilators (among other products) for the world in Australia and Singapore. There is no better illustration of how this scenario played out than through ‘Australia’s own’ ResMed, the globally successful medical devices company. Donald Trump and the long arm of the Defense Production Act Had Australia not ‘flattened the curve’ as dramatically as it has during the period since, these two great mates might have found themselves in bitter dispute over the availability of life-saving equipment as the powers of the Defense Production Act reached deep into the Australian manufacturing ecosystem. Through a frantic and co-ordinated period of action, both countries governments have moved swiftly – chequebook in hand – to bring new manufacturing capability online to supply critical healthcare products, particularly in the supply of personal protective equipment and critical care respirators.
When President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act as a response to coronavirus in early April it provided a stark acknowledgement of supply-chain gaps not only in the United States, but within the supply chains of its good mate Australia as well.
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