President Biden on Monday was set to convene the first meeting of the new White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience, during which he planned to announce 30 actions to improve economic data and programs tied to the shipment of goods.
“These actions will help Americans get the products they need when they need them, enable reliable deliveries for businesses, strengthen our agriculture and food systems, and support good-paying, union jobs here at home,” the White House said in a statement.
The new council is in response to supply chain issues that fueled inflation in 2021 as the U.S. was recovering from the Covid pandemic.
Among the new actions, Biden will employ the Defense Production Act to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to invest in domestic manufacturing of medicine that’s deemed crucial for national security.
The government will also improve its ability to monitor supply chains by sharing data between federal agencies.
For instance, the Commerce Department, which has developed new tools for assessing risks to the supply chain, will partner with the Department of Energy on renewable energy resources. The Transportation Department, meanwhile, is furnishing data to shipping companies on freight logistics.
The new supply chain council will be co-chaired by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Director of the White House National Economic Council Lael Brainard.
The White House noted that since the supply-chain crisis of 2021, “[T]he Administration has made historic investments to strengthen supply chains and prevent future disruptions by expanding production capacity in key sectors and building infrastructure through the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
And during the past two years, from October 2021 to October 2023, supply chain pressures declined from record highs to record lows, helping to decrease inflation by 65% from its peak, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
PHOTO: Shipping containers, Port Elizabeth, NJ
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