Baby Formula Shortage

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The Baby Formula shortage is terrible. Raising a baby is tough enough. Democrats want to blame unfettered capitalism. Republicans want to just blame Biden, without real criticisms beyond feeding babies in federal custody (which we must do, legally and morally.) Like most things it’s more complex and many sides are to blame.

The best explanations I’ve seen point to a lack of elasticity in the market due to over consolidation to just 3 mega corporations. One of which shut down its factory due to bacterial contamination. That took out supply, compounded further by the global supply chain issues and a lag in response to surging demand from rising births in 2021.

In modern, global markets we’d add supply from other countries. Unfortunately, Trump signed a US-Mexico-Canada trade deal that grossly limits baby formula imports from Canada (as a favor to those 3 mega corporations). Further, over regulation from the FDA limits imports of baby formula from Europe for silly issues like label requirements. Even going so far as seizing perfectly good, healthy European formula and destroying it.

So, both sides got us into this. It’s going to take both sides to get us out of it. And make sure it doesn’t happen again.