[makomk]

If Europe - which is, as you may recall, not led by Trump - had expanded their N95 mask production capacity back in January we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Continental Europe is at least as capable of doing so as the US, if not more so (one of the main global manufacturers of the specialist melt-blowing machines required to make the filtering material in them is based there). The main problem is that it just doesn't seem to be possible to increase N95 production capacity enough within the timescale necessary, no matter what Trump or anyone else orders companies to do.

(Trump could obviously also have used the DPA to ban mask exports back in January, but that'd just have screwed the rest of the world - including countries which, frankly, were in more desperate and immediate need of them back then - in an even more spectacular and counter-productive fashion. It was in the US's direct interest to reduce the spread of coronavirus in other countries back then.)