Olszewski Asks Trump to Reopen White Marsh GM Plant During Pandemic

Now that President Trump has ordered General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators for COVID-19 patients at auto plants, Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski Jr. (D) is asking the president to press GM to reopen its shuttered plant at White Marsh.

Olszewski wrote to Trump over the weekend, quoting a tweet from the president referring to GM plants that had been “stupidly abandoned.” Olszewski argued that the White Marsh plant, where the automaker made hybrid transmissions until a year ago, was also “stupidly abandoned.”

“These workers are idle, they are skilled, and they could make a meaningful contributions to the national effort to increase the supply of medical equipment needed by state and local governments to respond to COVID-19,” Olszewski wrote.

Olszewski described White Marsh as “a large state of the art facility with advanced technology,” uniquely situated to make the badly-needed medical equipment and transport it to major metropolitan centers and “hot spots” where the virus is spreading.

“The Department of Health and Human Services announced this week that the federal government will pay General Motors $489 million to manufacturer 30,000 ventilators,” Olszewski wrote. “This money should be leveraged to put hardworking Americans back to work — including residents of Baltimore County.”

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