Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski is asking President Trump to force General Motors to reopen its plant in White Marsh so it can make ventilators.
In a letter to the president released over the weekend, Olszewski said making ventilators in White Marsh would make sense because it’s on the I-95 corridor. Railroad lines and the Port of Baltimore are also nearby.
Olszewski in the letter cites one of the president’s tweets, in which Trump criticized GM for “stupidly abandoning” some of its plants. Olszewski wrote to Trump that in Baltimore County, “We have our own stupidly abandoned plant.”
GM closed the plant last year, putting around 300 people out of work. When the company announced it was closing White Marsh and several other plants, it said it was doing so because it would make GM "highly agile, resilient and profitable, which gives us flexibility to invest in the future."
President Trump last month invoked the Defense Production Act, and ordered GM to make ventilators, which are needed for some patients who are sick with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.