WASHINGTON, March 27 -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Peter Navarro will coordinate the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA), a wartime law the president recently invoked to cope with the spread of the coronavirus in the country.
Announcing the decision at the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force news briefing Friday, Trump said "my order establishes that Peter will serve as national Defense Production Act policy coordinator for the federal government."
The president said Navarro has been undertaking the job over the last few weeks, but the appointment, contained in an executive order the president signed earlier in the day, made his new title official.
Navarro, 70, now serves as director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, a body Trump established within the White House in 2017.
The president signed an executive order on March 18 invoking the DPA, amid the drastically deteriorating situation the country faced in the coronavirus outbreak.
In the context of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, the law authorizes the president to require companies to boost supplies of medical goods such as respirators and ventilators - items of which several states are facing a shortage as confirmed cases of the new coronavirus surged beyond 100,000 nationwide, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
Passed by Congress in 1950 as a response to the Korean War, the DPA gives the president the authority to direct companies to increase the production of national defense-related items. It also entitles the president to control the distribution of supplies deemed critical.