I’m not saying that making the basic machinery for PPE is easy compared to say, simple firearms. They’re obviously more complex. But they’re also a known problem; we’ve been making PPE out of the same basic materials since 1972. Compared to other large scale efforts the US has undergone to fight wars or handle other national pride situations, making more PPE machines is both cheaper and simpler. It does not require the creation of new technologies, nor the whole sale mobilization and re-organization of our society. All it requires is the application of enough money to buy an F-35 or two to rebuild the machines that were dismantled back in 2000.

This is not complicated, we just lack the will as a society to fix this.

What is your hypothesis on why the UK, France, Germany, Norway, etc. have not just dictated new capacity into existence? If they could do that, then even if the US was uniquely sucking wind, we could just buy from them. We can't.

No idea. I don’t know enough about those countries to have a meaningful opinion.

Of course there are difficulties. Everything is difficult compared to just buying stuff from China. The entire point is that we used to tackle the difficulties and work hard to succeed, rather than simply give up and recite reasons why things cannot be done.