Some six months after Pearl Harbor, with American industry in a desperate rush to build tanks, planes and ships to defeat Japan, the Higgins shipyard had no choice but to relinquish a contract it had signed only months earlier to build cargo ships. Higgins lacked the steel it needed. An exasperated New York Times editorial board asked: “Could not this shortage of steel have been foreseen when the contract was signed, or even months before then?”
Today, the world faces COVID-19, an emergency that many have compared to a war-like crisis. Countries around the globe struggle with multiple critical shortages in medical supplies and equipment. With COVID-19 cases rising rapidly, these shortages threaten to leave curable patients untreated and health professionals exposed, with potentially grave consequences. And this has produced calls to use U.S. national defense authorities to compel industry to shift production from consumer goods to critical medical supplies.
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