Supply chain

Give a country rare earth elements and it’ll have fighter jets, missiles and warships for a day. Force a country to extract and process its own rare earth elements and it’ll be safe from relying on countries run by unstable dictators forever.  Such is President Trump’s sensible line of thinking as he keeps up America's trade war with China. As China imposed export licensing restrictions on seven rare earth elements, or REEs, last week, Trump signed an Executive Order “launching an investigation into the national security risks posed by US reliance on imported processed critical minerals and their derivative products.” The administration is now pursuing a deal to procure REEs from Ukraine.

President Joe Biden presided over an event at the White House on Monday in which he announced the creation of a Council on Supply Chain Resilience and promised actions to “strengthen supply chains, lower costs for families and help Americans get the goods they need.” This news might bring a sigh of relief to many — finally, the Biden administration is taking inflation seriously! But the White House first led with a “Bidenomics” victory lap that felt more like a slap in the face than a swelling pocketbook. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg gave opening remarks in which he chastised the media for “saying that Christmas was going to be canceled” due to supply chain disruptions in the winter of 2021.

Move over baby formula: there’s a new shortage in town. Tampons are becoming increasingly hard to find in Joe Biden’s America. Much as they did with the formula shortage, I’m sure the president’s handlers will wait a few weeks before briefing Joe on the tampon issue. After all, they wouldn’t want to upset their boss with more bad news while he is trying to enjoy his weekly weekend trip to his mansion on Rehoboth Beach. (He left at 11 a.m. on Friday, by the way.) Unfortunately for the White House, the media are not ignoring the problem. NPR ran a piece this week titled, “It’s not just you: tampons are harder to find — and pricier.

Soaring gasoline prices (they’re up 49 percent since President Biden took office) are due to “Putin’s price hikes,” claims Biden. But last I checked, Putin wasn’t stateside canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, pursuing efforts to end federal oil and gas leasing programs, and careening our country toward more Covid-like lockdowns, social isolation, supply chain shortages, and another summer crime wave. A brief recap of Biden’s oil and gastastrophe: in January 2021, during his first days in office, the president revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit and issued an executive order that, in his own typically eloquent words, directed the “Secretary of the Interior to stop issuing new oil and gas leases on public lands and offsh- — and offshore waters, wherever possible.

There’s a crisis in America and the Biden administration doesn’t want to talk about it. At the end of April, 40 percent of the top-selling baby formula products were out of stock at American retailers. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Those not acquainted with newborn life may have missed the bare shelves in the baby aisle, but mothers unable to breastfeed did not. Up to 32 percent or more of American women can’t or do not breastfeed (and 60 percent quit early), relying exclusively on formula to feed their babies. Indiana mother Mandi Hall relies on specialized, brand-name formula to feed her two-year-old son with health problems. She says she’s terrified that soon she won’t have what he needs to eat. She’s not alone.

With Christmas right around the corner, the supply chain crisis, and what or whom to blame for it, is a hot topic this season. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal recently published a pair of articles about a purported nationwide shortage of truck drivers causing delivery delays. According to Business Insider, however, the reports of a driver shortage are “overblown.” Time, too, rebutted the claims with a column declaring that “The Truck Driver Shortage Doesn’t Exist.” (My theory is that all the sane truck drivers in America abandoned their rigs and ran for the hills the moment they heard Joe Biden say he “used to drive an 18-wheeler.” Egads!) What, then, are we to believe? Why, the truck drivers themselves, of course! So off to Sapp Bros.

We begin today with the reigning alpha of the self-celebrated political super-staffers. Enter Ron Klain, President Joe Biden's chief of staff, who is a polymath in the D.C. sense that he has both a job and a Twitter account. Klain last week made news when he endorsed a tweet that dismissed our current bout of inflation as a mere problem for the "high class." Cut to Jeff Bezos weeping at the grocery store: "I can't possibly afford any of this!!!" Klain, according to a New York Times profile, is neighbors with Chief Justice John Roberts and lists Twitter as a "hobby," so you can tell he's the well-adjusted sort.