https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/gavin-newsom-masks-1-billion-ppe-deal-chinese-byd-lloyd-billingsley/
“We’ve been competing against other states, against other nations, against our own federal government for PPE — coveralls, masks, shields, N95 masks — and we’re not waiting around any longer. And we’re no longer interested in the progress that we were seeing in the past.”
That was California governor Gavin Newsom in an April 7 MSNBC appearance with Rachel Maddow. As Newsom added, “In the last 48 hours we have secured –through a consortia of nonprofits and a manufacturer here in the state of California – upwards of 200 million masks on a monthly basis that we’re confident we can supply the needs of the state of California, potentially the needs of other western states.”
As it happened, the manufacturer wasn’t exactly “here in the state of California.” The manufacturer was BYD, “Build Your Dreams,” a Chinese company not known for making personal protective equipment. Newsom wasn’t revealing details of the $1 billion deal, which as John Myers of the Los Angeles Times noted, “will cost taxpayers 30 percent more than the governor’s January budget allotted for infectious diseases for the whole fiscal year.”
The day after Newsom’s MSNBC appearance, San Francisco Democrat Phil Ting, chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, told reporters, “We don’t have any information as to how many masks we’re buying, who we’re buying them from, at what price. What are we obligated? For how long are we obligated?” Los Angeles Democrat Holly Mitchell, chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, fired off an official letter demanding details. Newsom wasn’t talking, which prompted an escalation.