Biden administration to import baby formula from Mexico

AP Photo/Michael Conroy

What took so long? Baby formula has been available all along in Mexico if social media posts are any reference. Americans traveling to Mexico for business or pleasure frequently post a photo of formula found on store shelves and many say they will bring some home for family members or friends searching for it. Too bad that the Biden administration hasn’t shown that kind of initiative to help out families in need.

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Today the Biden administration announced it is providing logistical support to import about 16 million 6-ounce baby formula bottles from Mexico. The project starts this weekend. It involves the Department of Health and Human Services expediting trucks that will drive about 1 million pounds of Gerber Good Start Gentle infant formula from a Nestle plant to U.S. retailers. This will nearly double the amount of formula imported to the U.S. to date.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is providing logistical support to import the equivalent of about 16 million 8-ounce baby formula bottles from Mexico starting this weekend, as part of its efforts to ease nationwide supply shortages caused by the closure of the largest U.S. manufacturing plant. Cargo flights from Europe and Australia have flown baby formula into the U.S. Two new rounds of air shipments will begin this weekend.

The White House wants you to think this is wonderful news and proof that they are on this problem, working to get formula on store shelves. That narrative can only be believed by people who have not been paying attention to the Biden baby formula crisis at all. There were warning signals about potential shortages last fall. When the Abbott facility closed in February due to a contamination problem, the warnings became stronger. The Biden administration has mostly been silent on the crisis, only answering questions when pressed to do so. At one point, we were told by the president himself that he’s not a mind reader, you know. How could he have known this was coming?

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The Abbott facility in Michigan finally reopened earlier this month and pledged to run shifts 24/7 to produce as much formula as quickly as possible. The plant was sanitized and safety protocols were put in place. Now the plant is closed again, this time due to severe weather damage to the plant.

Team Biden only alerted the Big Guy that there was a baby formula shortage last month, as hard as that is to believe, even for them. Biden authorized the use of the Defense Production Act to provide federal support to get the formula from overseas to the U.S. This administration lives in a particularly strong bubble, oblivious to the lives of everyday Americans. Do none of the younger staffers have babies and use formula to feed them? Did no one in the White House see a random headline here or there about rising concerns about shortages? Granted, there wasn’t a huge amount of curiosity shown by the press until things turned drastic but there were stories occasionally published. The lack of a sense of urgency to attend to the crisis has been eye-opening. If no one else, where has Transportation Secretary Buttigieg been – the man touted by the press as father of the year for taking a long paternity leave at the expense of taxpayers, even during a time of supply chain disruptions? The Washington, D.C. insiders in the press have been trying to raise Buttigieg’s profile and want him to be considered a possible presidential candidate in 2024.

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In the emergency air shipments coming this weekend, there will be 1.65 million 8-ounce bottles of Nestle NAN Supremepro 2 infant formula from Germany to Texas. Also, 5.5 million 8-ounce bottle equivalents of Bubs infant formula will be flown in in two shipments on June 26 and July 5. The White House boasts that by June 26, Operation Fly Formula will have brought 32 flights and almost 19 million 8-ounce bottle equivalents of formula into the U.S.

Shame on the Biden administration for allowing something as basic as baby formula to reach this crisis situation in the first place. America is looking like a third world country unable to feed its own babies.

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