The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administration argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch.

In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of goods.

[If the Biden administration uses the DPA to re-shore these production lines — especially to cut China out of the loop — then I’d consider that a legit defense/nat-sec priority. The Guardian’s report only focuses on Biden’s effort to deal with the political damage of inflation, though, which makes this a very suspect use of the DPA. And probably a mostly useless exercise to boot, since this won’t lower prices, especially for the actual patients in third-party-payer systems. — Ed]