The shortage of baby formula in the United States has been attributed to many things. The closure of Abbott Nutrition in Michigan is one reason. The FDA has also recalled a number of batches due to fears of bacterial contamination.
But now people are questioning whether the policies of Donald Trump may be partly to blame as well.
Trump and his allies in the GOP have been using the shortage to lash out at Joe Biden and the Democrats. But Trump himself signed off on a policy that’s worsening the shortage.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was basically an update to NAFTA. The North American Free Trade Agreement mostly eliminated tariffs and barriers to trade between the three countries in North America.
But the USMCA created at least one that could be having an impact on baby formula.
At a recent press conference, Florida Senator Rick Scott tried to fault Biden for the formula shortage:
So, across Florida, I’m getting texts, I’ve gotten phone calls of parents that are struggling. They’re spending hours as they try to find formula. And some of them can’t find it … You can’t imagine that in the United States of America, parents are worried about feeding their children.
That’s more than ironic, given the GOP stance on assistance programs like WIC and SNAP. But Senator Scott went on to list a bunch of countries that all have plenty of baby formula while contrasting that with the United States. That included Canada.
But Trump’s USMCA made it practically impossible to import formula into the US.
The US did all it could to prevent Canada from developing excess production capacity so we couldn’t compete with them in Asia.
That’s why they freaked about a Chinese dairy investment in Kingston, ON. They wanted it shut down. We said no, because jobs. It was a full blown thing.
— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) May 13, 2022 [1]
Protectionist Republicans have always wanted to “win” on trade. Trump himself can’t even envision a deal of any kind that doesn’t end up with him “winning.”
But now, because of that mindset, Americans — and American BABIES — are losing.