This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 5th, 2022. I'm

cable Brown. It's not been in headlines as often recently, but the baby formula

crunch continues relatively unimpeded.

That is between domestic regulatory rules and foreign trade barriers.

The federal government has established a high bar for getting safe reasonably priced formula on store shelves.

Cato's Gabriella Beaumont Smith explains.

Among the supply chain hiccups, I don't know if I'd call this a hiccup at this point it would be you know perhaps world record

setting hicups if it were going on for as long as it has been but to the extent that we've

had supply chain disruptions and problems with creating in the United States

sufficient baby formula for parents to feed to their children. This has gone on for a very long time.

And it's not, it's the kind of thing where I watch Joe Biden sort of wave his fist and say that he's going to invoke things like the

Defense Production Act to compel corporations to make things for the benefit of

U.S. consumers but it doesn't ever seem to strike him to quickly get out of the way of the people who would

like to make products and buy those products in the United States.

And you've pointed to in a number of occasions just sort of the dumb rules that govern the degree to which in this pinch, this awful pinch for parents,

they can buy baby formula that comes from somewhere else.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, we're still seeing out of stock levels around 30% on a national level, which is much lower than we were seeing a few months ago,

but is not really acceptable for America.

And there has been some positive news on the trade front Congress passed legislation

and has been signed by the president to remove tariffs and quotas on imports of baby formula.

But what still remains a problem is the FDA approval process and while the FDA has said it is expediting

...