After completing a review of supply chains, the Biden administration announced Tuesday that it was forming a task force to address the bottlenecks in the semiconductor, construction, transportation and agriculture sectors.
Administration officials said the goal of the review, detailed in a 250-page report, was to increase domestic manufacturing, limit shortages of vital goods and reduce a dependence on geopolitical competitors such as China. The officials said the administration wanted to get ahead of crises such as the computer chip shortage that has hurt automakers this year.
“Our approach to supply chain resilience needs to look forward to emerging threats from cybersecurity to climate issues,” Sameera Fazili, a deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, said at Tuesday’s news briefing. “And so we are future-proofing.”
The 100-day review emphasized that supply chains are critical for national security, economic stability and global leadership, noting how the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil exposed U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities, like when soaring demand for medical products wreaked havoc on the health care system.
A shortage of raw materials has made it harder for the U.S. economy to recover from the pandemic-induced recession. The supply bottleneck has helped fuel a bout of inflation that the administration believes will be temporary, though it has provided Republican lawmakers and some economists with grounds for criticizing Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.