If there was ever an administration unequal to the challenge of mitigating product shortages and lowering inflation, it must be the Biden administration. They know they have to do something, but they do not have a clue except in the public relations department. In the real world, the administration’s actions and proposals either have aggravated or will aggravate the underlying problem(s).
Yesterday President Biden stepped forward to read from a teleprompter about the administration’s purported fixes. The White House has posted the text of his remarks under the heading “Efforts to Address Global Transportation Supply Chain Bottlenecks” (video below).
I think there is more to the underlying problems than Reuters picks up in “U.S. supply chain too snarled for Biden Christmas fix, experts say,” but even Reuters isn’t buying what Biden is selling. I’m not buying this: “I might add, parenthetically: One of the reasons why I think it’s very important that we get the — the infrastructure plan passed — my infrastructure plan — and that’s the supply chain system is almost entirely in the hands of private business.”
Quotable quote: “I want to thank my Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, which we set up in June, led by Secretaries Buttigieg, Raimondo, and Vilsack, and by my Director of National Economic Council, Brian Deese. I want to thank them for their leadership. And I especially want to thank Joe [John] Porcari. And I think Joe [John] has done one heck of job — my special envoy, specifically on ports, who has been working this issue with all of the stakeholders for the past several weeks.”
PAUL ADDS: So Secretary Buttigieg and the other two have been assigned with addressing supply chain disruption issues since June. I guess Biden thinks it speaks well of him that he saw the problem developing four months ago. But it speaks poorly of the “leadership” of Buttigieg and the others that they have been assigned to the problem for four months without any apparent success in dealing with it.
And why did Biden assign Joe [John] (“heck of a job”) Porcari with working “on ports” only “several weeks” ago? Why not much earlier?
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