The United States is too dependent on foreign sources for critical supplies needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign said, promising to bring back production “to U.S. soil.”
“Under President Trump, our supply chains have actually gotten less secure,” a senior Biden campaign official told reporters Tuesday.
The official said Biden believes the U.S. relies too much on foreign manufacturers for energy technology, electronics, telecommunications and computer equipment, along with medical equipment.
The campaign said if Biden is elected president in November, his plan would begin an immediate 100-day review of the U.S. supply chain, use the Defense Production Act to boost manufacturing of critical products, and create stockpiles of supplies “so that the United States never again faces the kind of vulnerability it did in this crisis,” the official said.
The Biden campaign said it is already working on plans to mass-produce and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, if one is ready, if he becomes president in January.
President Donald Trump has said policies by former President Barack Obama, for whom Biden was vice president, made U.S. supply chains weaker.
But the Biden campaign said Trump policies were to blame for making the U.S. “dangerously dependent on foreign suppliers" such as China and Russia.