Use this power now

Mayor de Blasio is furious with President Trump’s hesitancy to use the full authority of his office to help New York curb coronavirus. We share his frustration. But we worry greatly that even if true, the mayor’s new line that the president is the “Herbert Hoover of his generation” may turn a moment when local and federal cooperation is imperative into a period of escalating political warfare.

De Blasio’s raw anger is righteous. It stems from the fact that Wednesday, Trump belatedly signed an executive order triggering extraordinary authorities under the National Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that allows Washington to force private companies to contract with government to produce supplies necessary for the national defense.

Yet Trump is dangerously hesitant to use the DPA’s powers.

He tweeted Thursday that he’d only invoke the act’s provisions in a “worst case scenario” (um, what do you call this?), saying the federal government’s “not a shipping clerk” for the essential supplies that hospitals and front-line health workers are running dangerously short of as they battle the coronavirus.

The president can order American personal protective equipment manufacturers like 3M, Alpha ProTech, Gerson, DuPont, Moldex, Honeywell and Johnson’s Fire Equipment Company to prioritize making the gloves and face masks we need right today and will need even more urgently tomorrow.

Under the terms of the law, the federal government would lend money to those companies directly to facilitate mask and glove production while protecting them from anti-trust lawsuits.

The president must do this. He must do it now.