This is part of the 3M arm twisting that's going on, I think.
As far as I can tell, the German government put in an order of 400,000 FFP2 class masks for the Berlin police force. Payment was made to the 3M subsidiary in China and they were manufactured there according to German specifications. They were then packed and shipped to Germany via Bangkok.
In Bangkok, they were redirected to the US. What happened in Bangkok? Germany claims they were stolen, the US has issued a denial with a lot of weasel words indicating that yeah, they did it but aren't going to admit to it.
The takeaway from this is not to order any essential supplies from a US owned manufacturer at this time, no matter where they operate in the world.
