As part of his “Bidenomics agenda to lower costs for American families,” President Biden announced on Monday the inaugural meeting of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience. The cabinet-level council will implement “nearly 30 new actions to strengthen supply chains critical to America’s economic and national security.”
The White House stated the “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 president claimed that his administration’s policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act have assisted with reducing supply-chain pressures, while lowering inflation and bringing more jobs back to the United States.
“Today, our supply chains are stronger than ever, with backlogs, bottlenecks, and shipping rates at a 25-year low. We’ve created 14 million new jobs, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs. And the unemployment rate has stayed below 4 percent — below 4 percent for the longest period — the longest stretch in over 50 years.” Biden touted.
As part of the new council’s inaugural meeting, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release, Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “unveiled the Supply Chain Resilience Center (SCRC), a new U.S. government entity designed to collaborate with the private sector to better secure our supply chains. The SCRC will analyze vulnerabilities and conduct scenario planning with private sector stakeholders to help mitigate supply chain disruptions, ensure reliable and efficient deliveries of goods and services, and lower costs for the American people.”
“Securing our critical infrastructure is fundamental to staying competitive in a 21st century economy, and the Department of Homeland Security’s new Supply Chain Resilience Center will enhance our efforts to do just that,” said Mayorkas. “The global pandemic has revealed that the supply chains that Americans rely upon for food and essential other goods must be more robust and resilient. Conflict, political instability, and climate change could challenge our supply chains in the years ahead. The Supply Chain Resilience Center will help American businesses and the federal government anticipate these disruptions and play a key role in the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to prevent them.”
Department of Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves reportedly participated in the new council’s inaugural meeting, highlighting the “vital work of Commerce’s Supply Chain Center along with several other key steps the Department is taking to lower costs for American families, strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness, protect U.S. national security, and create good jobs and broad-based economic opportunity by increasing the resilience of supply chains.”
“Increasing U.S. supply chain resilience is, without question, one of the top priorities here at the Department of Commerce,” said Graves in a press release. “By utilizing a whole-of-Commerce approach, the full force of the Department is working to ensure that we have the tools and resources necessary to create an economy that works for all Americans, starting with resilient supply chains.”
According to The Guardian, Moody’s Analytics economist Jesse Rogers stated, “Supply chain stress has eased measurably over the past year and the Biden administration’s announcement is another step in the right direction.”
However, Rogers added, “While unlikely to resolve some of the more complex issues plaguing supply chains in one go, measures targeting pharmaceuticals, climate infrastructure, data security and logistics will bolster resilience and get the ball rolling on smart infrastructure and global cooperation.”
Reading through the White House issued comprehensive fact sheet covering the new council not only highlights Biden’s actions, it shines a light on the massive labyrinth of the federal government agencies that will be affected. All of this points to more bureaucratic obstacles designed to control commerce, versus allowing a true free-market economy to prevail when there is less government interference with trade.
Ultimately, Monday’s announcement could be viewed as nothing more than another reelection campaign tactic for Biden, as he also spent time speaking about overall successes, including on how “we’ve been able to push back on Republican — MAGA Republicans” proposed cuts to infrastructure, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Attempting to appear optimistic that his policies are working and these new actions are the beginning of a new era, Biden closed his remarks stating, “I truly believe that 50 years from now, when historians are taking a look at this — looking back at this moment — when they look back on the work we’re doing to build the economy from the bottom up and middle out; to strengthen the American supply chains and manufacturing workers all across the country, they’re going to say that this was the beginning — when America won the competition of the 21st century.”
