“Essentially you've done that in California. You've done that in New York. Those are two hotbeds,” he said. But, he added, “you go out to the Midwest, you go out to other locations, and they're watching it on television, but they don't have the same problems. They don't have by any means the same problem.”

While the president said he would continue to work with governors, “I don't think we'll ever find that necessary,” he said of a nationwide lockdown.

Even as his administration has ramped up its coronavirus response, Trump has appeared hesitant at times to take steps that would further kneecap a U.S. economy that is already in an unprecedented free fall. Even without a nationwide lockdown, millions of Americans have already essentially self-quarantined, posing a mortal danger to the service and hospitality industries and threatening to thrust the entire U.S. economy into a recession.

The dramatic economic slowdown has prompted talks between the White House and Congress not just on a massive bailout package for suffering industries but also of plans to cut checks to individual Americans. Taken together, costs for the government's economic response are expected to soar past $1 trillion.

What Trump did announce was that he had finally put the Defense Production Act, which would allow him to order private corporations to manufacture desperately supplies, “into high gear,” days after saying he would not yet trigger the Korean War-era statute. But aside from name-checking General Motors, the president declined to say what companies he had ordered into action and how many items he had ordered.

He also announced the partial closure of the U.S.-Mexico border to nonessential travel, a move that mirrors the closure of the northern border with Canada earlier this week. Trump rolled out a number of new measures aimed at providing relief to American consumers as well, saying the Education Department would allow federal student loan borrowers to suspend payments for at least 60 days and that the IRS is pushing back its deadline to file taxes by three months.

The president and his coronavirus task force were repeatedly questioned throughout the nearly 90-minute briefing on everything from their failures to produce widespread access to test kits for the respiratory illness to health care workers' unmet pleas for personal protective equipment or treatment machines like ventilators.

But a day after saying that it was states’ responsibility to procure supplies, and that the federal government was not a “shipping clerk," Trump signaled a move to nationalize the supply chain and improve the allocation of resources for health care providers. He announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would take over emergency response, asking governors to coordinate with their regional FEMA administrators.

Experts had urged such an approach because the federal government has powers to boost production that states do not and a federal approach can allocate scarce goods to the places that need them most, not just the state that calls up manufacturers fastest. Trump alluded to that dynamic on Friday.

“We need certain equipment that the states are unable to get by themselves,” he said. “So we're invoking [the Defense Production Act] to use the powers of the federal government to help the states get things that they need, like the masks, like the ventilators.”

Still, the new approach appeared to be uneven. Asked about concerns raised by Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican, a day earlier that the federal government was outbidding states for critical supplies, Trump acknowledged such occurrences but contended that "smart" states call and tell the government to withdraw its bid.