Biden Does What Trump Wouldn't And Invokes Defense Production Act To Save Lives

President Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act to make essential medicines in America and take steps to fix the supply chain to avoid shortages.

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Biden Invokes The Defense Production Act

According to a fact sheet provided to PoliticusUSA by the White House, the President will be invoking the Defense Production Act:

President Biden will issue a Presidential Determination to broaden the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) authorities under Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to enable investment in domestic manufacturing of essential medicines, medical countermeasures, and critical inputs that have been deemed by the President as essential to the national defense.

HHS has identified $35 million for investments in domestic production of key starting materials for sterile injectable medicines. HHS will also designate a new Supply Chain Resilience and Shortage Coordinator for efforts to strengthen the resilience of medical product and critical food supply chains, and to address related shortages. HHS intends to institutionalize this coordination to advance the department’s supply chain resilience and shortage mitigation goals over the long term. The Department of Defense (DOD) will also soon release a new report on pharmaceutical supply chain resilience aimed at reducing reliance on high-risk foreign suppliers. These actions are a subset of the Administration’s broader work to increase access to essential medicines and medical products.

At the height of the COVID pandemic, we all heard a lot about supply chains. Before COVID most people didn’t give much thought if any to supply chains, but it turns out that supply chains have a large impact on inflation.

The chart below shows how inflation tracks with supply chain issues:

President Biden has reduced supply chain pressure by 65%, which has helped to reduce inflation.