President Trump is getting into a shouting match with 3M MMM  over where masks are going. What the government should be doing is something very different: Buying its way out of production bottlenecks.

This doesn’t mean buying face masks, or telling 3M where to send them. It means buying two kinds of machinery. Machines that stamp out masks from fabric are in short supply. So are machines that make filtration fabric.

特朗普总统正与3M MMM就口罩的去向展开一场口水战。政府应该做的是一件非常不同的事情:通过收购来摆脱生产瓶颈。

这并不意味着要购买口罩，或告诉3M将口罩寄往何处。这意味着买两种机器。从织物上印出口罩的机器供应不足。制造过滤布的机器也是如此。