White House Officials Elaborate on Supply Chain Review
At a White House press briefing, National Economic Council Deputy Director Sameera Fazili said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will lead a Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force "to tackle near-term bottlenecks in the semiconductor, homebuilding and construction, transportation, and agricultural and food industries."
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She said during the June 8 press conference that they will collaborate with business, labor and stakeholders to find solutions to the supply-demand mismatches "we are seeing in these sectors as the economy reignites."
Members of Congress have said that the Commerce Department is working at cross purposes to the homebuilding industry with tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber.
Peter Harrell, senior director of international economics and competitiveness at the National Security Council, was asked what the trade strike force will do compared with what trade enforcement already exists. Harrell replied, "So I think the trade strike force is a vehicle to leverage a number of our existing trade tools, but to really focus them on supply chain vulnerabilities. You know, we have -- as we looked across the four products that we are releasing reports on today, we saw example after example where an unfair foreign competitor's action had led to the hollowing out of a supply chain for a key U.S. product.
And these are all often very specific things those foreign governments are doing. So what this is going to do is harness and focus the government agencies involved in trade enforcement on how do we use our trade tools to strengthen -- to combat unfair trade practices that impact supply chains and to strengthen U.S. supply chains. And I think the neodymium magnet -- 232 -- we're asking Commerce to evaluate is an example of that."
He also said the administration is working on another report on supply chain risk in six key industrial base sectors, which will be completed in February.