US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ | Hacker News Reader

US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’

bbc.com

45 pointsetiam68 comments

Turkey just did a similar thing to Spain with 150 ventilators.

source: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-04-03/turquia-retiene-un-ca...

I can't edit my parent post, but Turkey thankfully did let the respirators pass through customs today. Even if they were build in turkey by a turkish company, the sell to Spain was before Turkey implemented the no-medical-export-ban so after some diplomacy calls they let it through I guess (hopefully we can send them back to others in need when they need it)

This story is a little bit one-sided. If you read right-wing media, you'll get stories one-sided in the other direction.

States in the US had placed orders for masks, in some cases more than a month ago, and have not received them even after having paid for them. They were getting outbid after having a contract in place, and companies (including 3M distributors) weren't honoring orders after higher-grossing orders came in. Florida-bound masks were being diverted to other countries.

A whole bunch of countries had already stopped exports of medical equipment. The US was getting outbid on exports AND couldn't import, so was getting stripped of medical equipment. This was a response.

Was it a thoughtful, reasoned, reasonable response? No. But some sort of rapid response was needed since there was a flood of equipment out of the US.

There are also many disappearing orders in different ports, where shipments apparently just vanish in a poof of smoke. It's not clear who is to blame (but usually everyone assumes it is the US, with no clear evidence).

I'm not sure where this is going, but we're seeing escalation on many different sides. We want a deescalation. I'm not sure how to get to there from here. Without deescalation, these are the sorts of things which tend to escalate to war.

Reposted, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22776775 by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=madaxe_again appears to have been killed over a mistaken URL.

European governments should respond in kind. The United States must not be allowed to get away with such domineering tactics.

Germany was one of the first countries to ban mask exports to the rest of the world, including to other European countries like Italy during the depths of their coronavirus crisis when the healthcare system there was collapsing. They were eventually strong-armed into sharing their masks within the EU, but even that took a long time to convince them to do. This was particularly bad because they're one of the main manufacturers of N95 masks in Europe. In a sense, this is an example of the US responding in kind to something that Europe has already done.

Dont know about manufacturing, but 3M European distribution center in in DE, so banning exports meant confiscating whole European 3M inventory.

And then ban was lifted shortly afterwards.

For what it's worth, Germany is currently taking patients from Italy[1] and sending ventilators to Spain[2] to help them out. I think it just took some time to go from "scrambling to prepare" to cooperation between EU countries.

[1] https://dw.com/en/coronavirus-treating-european-patients-in-...

[2] https://www.efe.com/efe/english/portada/berlin-sends-ventila...

It remains to be seen whether such gestures are just PR though.

I think that the French and Italian patients being taken in charge by the German hospital won't give a f* that it is PR or not. They just want to survive and they sure will remember the german hand. Europe is a land of memory. We will not forget either the US actions.

Also taking patients from France (we are grateful)

The US intercepted a shipment in Thailand and tried the same in Singapore. That is a very different level than an export ban.

There will be hell to pay when this is over

> In a sense, this is an example of the US responding in kind to something that Europe has already done.

Is this meant to be funny ? /s

Seems like a kiddy moral statement. Europe has done so many bad things in the past, but US currently has the lead !

This affair learns us some interesting things :

1) nation states are the current structure that defends people, a statement which was challenged by the creation of EU, and will try to protect their people before others.

2) Global trade cannot abolish the aforementioned statements.

Pick your conclusion. Mine currently is :

States have lost self-reliance based on global trade doctrine and this trend should be reversed. Chicago school has made enough ravages.

Based on the current actions, it would appear that moving away from global trade results in piracy ( and likely other unilateral actions ). If this moment teaches us anything, it is that globalization ( I hate myself for using this argument already ) is actually a net good for us as a human kind.

So no, I believe your conclusion is incorrect. That trend should not be reversed as we need sufficiently interconnected world so that all interested parties think long and hard before they press the wrong button. MAD at its finest.

If globalization is a net positive, does the same logic hold for centralization of internet services? Here at HN we are largely proponents of decentralization, arguing it leads to a stronger whole. And yet when speaking of geopolitics we seem to have a blindspot and the same logic does not apply. I wonder why this is.

It is a valid point, but I have no answer other that different type of systems may follow different types of rules ( as in, centralization may not be good for every system ).

To be precise, it was never banned. It was regulated. So every export had to approved. And an export regulation is something different from seizing products outside the US, which were produced outside the US. It is also something different from rerouting ships to be able to seize their cargo.

Can Europe do this? Trump could then respond by blocking Google,Microsoft and other software services to serve Europe. A trade war will have many consequences, hopefully more smarter politician or diplomats could solve this disagreements and also Europe should consider reducing dependencies on US for critical stuff.

> Can Europe do this?

No. But it should recognize that it is currently a province in the US empire. If it wants to be sovereign, it should change that, if it doesn't, it should cut out their administrative overhead.

Europe outside of Germany has no advanced industrial capabilities at all. They can choose to do anything they want to, however they have three major industrial options to choose from: Germany, the US, China.

Germany can't make enough of anything to satisfy all of Europe's demand. That leaves having to deal with the US and China.

The first thing Germany did was shift to self-preservation mode, abandon their EU and Eurozone partners, and lock down their exports. Germany has been able to hyper test their own population, while the rest of Europe was left running at low rates of testing, including Britain, France, Spain and Italy, along with all of Eastern Europe.

This is partially why Italy's case mortality rate is now a shocking 12%, the Netherlands is 10%, the UK is 10%, Spain is near 10%, France is 8%, Belgium is 7%, Sweden is 6%. And these numbers keep getting worse. Mortality rates like this should never happen in developed nations (Canada's case mortality rate by contrast is a mere 1.5%, Germany is 1.4%). None of them are testing anywhere close to enough. People expect incompetence out of the US healthcare system, however Britain and France are supposed to be among the best in the world and they have completely failed (England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer just said yesterday that there's no need for the healthy general public to wear masks).

The reason why even France and Britain can't test their own populations properly, despite months of lead time, is they have no industrial capabilities to match what Germany can do. Europe is largely left helpless and with the EU collapsing - there is no scenario where Italy and Spain will ever trust the EU again - the infighting and bickering is likely to continue indefinitely.

> with the EU collapsing

Are there real signs of the EU collapsing?

Well, there is an argument to be made that the unity of the nation states was weakened somewhat with Brexit and rumblings of Polexit. So it is not really collapsing, but there is a nonzero chance of dissolving.

Personal opinion, not unlike with the internet, we seem to be intent on fracturing previously somewhat open fora, the global order from previous iteration to 'everyone for themselves' model, which served so well in the past.

edit: made last sentence clearer

>Europe outside of Germany has no advanced industrial capabilities at all

Could you at least google about this topic before going on building a whole theory on top of an absurd statement?

So France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden etc in the EU have no "advanced industrial capabilities at all", nor have the UK or Switzerland outside the EU, really?

As a German, I have to add there is not a single country in the EU without significant industrial capabilities.

I think the vision is a bit caricatural : France and Italy still have an important industry. Car, planes, drugs, luxury goods, trains, space launches, fin-mechanics and I miss a lot... Fr and IT are 6th and 7th economies in the world : you cannot achieve that without an important industrial layer. But of course Germany is the biggest industrial actor in Europe and among the biggests in the world.

> there is no scenario where Italy and Spain will ever trust the EU again - the infighting and bickering is likely to continue indefinitely.

I can see politicians would try to blame China or Germany for the fact their country was not prepared but I hope the majority is not that stupid. I can see and believe my country was not prepared and is in bad shape but there is no reason to blame others when the fault is internal.

And let them experience the European Kurzarbeitsgeld and they will change their mind. Additionally, Trumps behavior is indirectly strengthening the European idea by contrast.

> Germany has been able to hyper test their own population, while the rest of Europe was left running at low rates of testing, including Britain, France, Spain and Italy, along with all of Eastern Europe

This has almost nothing to do with industrial strength. This is about having lots of distributed, independent, competent laboratories. It certainly helped that the test was developed in Germany in January. Afterwards the developers started immediately to spread the knowledge about the test to the other laboratories. This shows the strength of decentralized laboratories. Other countries organized that differently. Sometimes centralization is more efficient, but often decentralization combined with distributed competence is more capable to adapt to change.

To me it looks like Germany did this before the US even considered Covid-19 a real problem.

Germany Faces Backlash From Neighbors Over Mask Export Ban[1].

> Since January, Taiwan, India and Thailand, all of which also make face masks, have banned their export, although, to help China, India later temporarily revoked its restriction. South Korea also banned the export of masks, as will Indonesia soon.

Outside Asia, Russia, Germany and the Czech Republic also stopped exports in early March. So did Kenya, where the first case of coronavirus was confirmed on March 13.[2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/germany-f...

[2] http://theconversation.com/the-global-effort-to-tackle-the-c...

So, as some countries took measures to protect their stock (while the US did not care about preparing at that moment), it is normal now that the US hijack other nations shipment ?

A more complete article on this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coro...

Still not terribly clear what happened. A journalist would want to talk to the shipper or the buyer of the masks, since 3M is disavowing any knowledge, and the German police just know they did not get their masks.

One thing is interesting: maybe 3M really don't know everything their suppliers are doing right now in China.

About 200,000 N95 masks were diverted to the US as they were being transferred between planes in Thailand, according to the Berlin authorities who said they had ordered the masks for the police force.

France, Germany, Canada, and even US states/counties had to complain about this "dumping" from the federal US administration and also from american private buyers. The topic is getting inflamatory in Europe.

France did this to the UK

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8137039/French-bord...

USA did this to France -

US buyers waving wads of cash managed to wrest control of a consignment of masks as it was about to be dispatched from China to one of the worst-hit coronavirus areas of France, according to two French officials.

The masks were on a plane at Shanghai airport that was ready to take off when the US buyers turned up and offered three times what their French counterparts were paying.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/global-battle-...

Lots of stories in the new wild west over bits of paper that should cost nothing.

Except the French story is pure fake as the masks were all delivered to UK. As Macron passed the law on the ban for mask export, the cops had to block the truck. Then UK and France administrations called each other and the truck was released almost immediatly. Non-story. Daily Mail.

LOL. I have seen 3 or 4 news about that in HN these last days and I personally submitted 2 more on this topic. Believe it or not, these news did not prompt many reactions from US HN commenters who usually have much to say on any topic :-)

It’s 8AM EDT. Most HNers aren’t even up this early.

Also, with the president’s multiple lies per day the media is barely covering it.

I can only speak for myself but what is there left to comment on? I have outrage fatigue. Trump goes from one incredible gaff/goof/statement to another. The list of his incompetence, arrogance, lies, and stupidity is quite large. It does not surprise me in the least that this latest selfish, short-sighted move was made.

His supporters are incapable of critiquing him. They are impervious to logic and reason. I no longer care to hear about his crimes and incompetence. I no longer care what he does. He is the President the United States deserves. In response to having elected the most incompetent, corrupt, and stupid President in history the opposition party is going to nominate a senile dinosaur who has no desire to upend the corporate dominance of our elected officials.

Old alliances are fragile and will be broken in times of desperation. To throw your allies under the bus like this will not be forgotten.

I hope that one consequence of these and similar action during this crisis will be an end to the global JIT production strategy and spur more decentralized and local production.

Why are we in Europe dependent on a US company with production in the far east, for critical medical supplies?

Like every country on the planet, you need far more N95 masks than usual right now, and there is literally not enough manufacturing capacity on the entire planet. Europe and especially Germany banned exports and blocked shipping of existing orders a while back, but because the US hadn't done so yet you could get away with siphoning off the US supply whilst banning them from doing the same to you.

Instead of making this another US vs Europe "we did/but they did" slapfight, try reading my post again.

EU countries instituted export regulations from their own countries, they didn't ban exports, they wanted to at least regulate how much left the country.

The US intercepted already agreed upon shipments, by swooping in and offering a much higher payment and strong-arming companies like 3M. The blame lies both with the US government and the manufacturers ignoring existing deals and agreements in favor of cold profit. And the US government also deserves blame for not recognizing the threat earlier, which they are now using as an excuse to screw over the rest of the world. Again.

Another important point is that companies like 3M are US based, adding yet another imbalance of power in this relationship.

However, my main point is why do we accept this fragile global JIT supply chain? We are we relying on essential products having to be shipped across the globe?

He is handling the problem created by his lack of preparation like he handles his pornstar problems. With money and bullying.

Nevermind that end of February the government still sold off particle respirators and masks to the highest bidder.

The only good news here is that after this is over many other western countries will finally get over the idea that the US is their friend and take a much needed pragmatic approach - especially when it comes to the sourcing of telco equipment.

The current administration speaks for the country right now, but doesn't set an eternal policy that determines the United States' thinking towards its partners or erases the decades of strong alliances from the past.

Actually this is the beauty of democracy, eventually we will change this - many of us Americans aren't happy with the way our country is treating our historical friends in Europe and elsewhere. It's important that democracies stay united through this crisis, and especially after this crisis.

There is nothing China and Russia would like more than long term friction in the Free World alliances.

> The current administration speaks for the country right now, but doesn't set an eternal policy that determines the United States' thinking towards its partners or erases the decades of strong alliances from the past.

I'm curious how that works, though. On the one hand, I can imagine that other countries might look back on all this (Trump) as a momentary 'lapse' in sanity, but honestly I suspect country-level memory lasts longer than that. If this kind of thing happens once, it can happen again, no? It might say something about the quality and stability of a country's 'institutional continuity', or whatever proper term one might use for it.

Can anyone here who knows more about these topics chime in, perhaps? I know very little, but have been thinking about this quite a bit. How does one 'bad administration' (regardless of whether Trump's is or isn't) affect ongoing relationships between countries? How far back does a country's memory go? Is there any kind of pattern to it, or does it depend entirely on the particulars of said country?

The current administration will go away, but I don't see the forces that put him in power going away any time soon. I can't predict the future, but I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the last clearly unsuitable Republican president the US will see.

I wouldn't bet against Trumps re-election, with his approval ratings going up in the middle of his biggest bungle.

Even if Biden is elected, I have limited hope for him to join us in tackling major issues such as global warming.

I also wouldn't bet on a resurgence of the "decent" GOP in the next decades, i.e. a party that "only" starts some baseless wars and doesn't promote antagonistic thinking in general. They will have noted very clearly what brought them their recent success.

I'm sorry to say, but as a German, I'm seriously wondering whether there is a better chance of establishing a reasonable dialogue with China than to stop you guys from messing stuff up.

> I'm seriously wondering whether there is a better chance of establishing a reasonable dialogue with China than to stop you guys from messing stuff up.

IMHO China is much much worse, ranging from censorship (often over very small issues, like comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh resulting in all of Winnie the Pooh being blacklisted), to the massive invasive surveillance state they've got and are expanding, to things like the concentration camps in Xinjiang.

For all the faults in the current US political landscape, it is still vastly better than China.

China and the US have a lot in common. Frankly watching the daily deluge of lies from the Trump administration's highest levels - the accusation that China may not be entirely truthful are hilarious

I agree there are certain similarities and problems in the US. But mass-censorship, concentration camps, and a true surveillance state on the level of China don't exist in the US. Some, like an expansion of the surveillance state, are plausible (maybe even likely?) in the near-future, whereas I don't see mass-censorship, concentration camps, or appointing the president for life happening any time soon.

And many of us aren't happy with how previous administration's have taken advantage of us. Many of the countries in NATO weren't contributing their fair share, for example. Trump changed that and now those countries have committed to paying their dues.

NATO is brain-dead. The turkish situation buried it and the american failure to show its leadership in this situation was the epitaph. Trump's policy on that matter has just prompted a major european shift about a true European defence system. Germanay did not want to hear about that 5 years ago and now is listening very seriously to the French and Italian. It has become obvious among the EU leaders that the US is not a reliable ally anymore and that de facto the post-war order is totally over.

And many countries will hopefully reconsider the outsourcing of essential goods.

Germany last month implemented export bans on medical equipment that applied to other EU nations as well. I believe many others have as well, but can't remember off the top of my head. Is any country a friend to any other?

That is totally different. Of course you want to care first for your people. So if USA said, exporting of ventilators is forbidden, that is one thing. Another thing is intercepting a rightful order of a 3rd country and taking it as their own.

Considering that Trump wants to keep manufacturing in the US (big issue during the campaign, no comment on whether this is a good or bad policy), this seems rather unwise in the long run. Basically he's showing that the US is an unreliable partner. I know these are exceptional circumstances, but there may be other exceptional circumstances in a few years time. I would think twice before establishing my manufacturing plants in the US.

He is constantly showing Europe that the US is an unreliable partner. I believe after the acute phase of the Corona crisis, US European will have changed forever. Russia and China are sending supplies and medical teams not only to their allies but also to lot's of African and European countries. Whereas the US does the exact opposite. Who do you think will have more influence on the world in the coming years?

Trumph is proving to be strong leader. It's weird.

Only if you consider throwing away the trust of every single partner they have is a good leadership move.

Strength through underhanded tactics is not strength. He's covering up his incompetence.

Desperate times, desperate measures. Had Trump not done this, the press would pan him for "not using the DPA" instead, like they did last week.

If he had actually used the DPA last week this wouldn’t have happened. This shipment had already left the US and was in Bangkok.

And if he had used the DPA in January we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

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.)

What would he do that for? If you recall, in January _zero_ people other than the president gave any shit about the virus. We didn't have any cases until something like January 19. 3 days later they formed the working group, and on Jan 31 they closed flights with China (Biden and liberal media called the move "racist"). To remind you at the time everyone was busy with third attempt at "investigation" and impeachment. Invoking DPA would be a bit "interesting" under those circumstances, and the dems would howl that he's "authoritarian", just like they are beginning to howl about it now, when there's end in sight for this. Do I need to show you the headlines and clips from end of January to lengthen your attention span? Pelosi handing out pens and inviting people to Chinatown? DeBlasio telling people to ignore coronavirus? Every single liberal media outlet saying Trump is overreacting and this is no worse than a flu?

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