President Biden Formalizes White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience
On June 14, 2024, President Biden issued an Executive Order on White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience (the “Order”). The Order, with a goal of strengthening US supply chain resilience and building “resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains,” encourages “close cooperation” with allies and partners to “foster collective economic and national security, encourage innovation, and strengthen the capacity to respond to and recover from international disasters and emergencies.”
The Order supplements Executive Order 14017, “Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains,” dated February 24, 2021, by formalizing the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience (the “Council”). The Order also requires the Council to “coordinate and promote Federal Government efforts to strengthen long-term supply chain resilience and American industrial competitiveness” and “provide a coordinated response to address supply chain insecurities, threats, and vulnerabilities,” “including excessive geographic or supplier concentration; and facilitate collaboration by agencies with allies and partners to foster greater global supply chain resilience.”
The Council consists of 30 Cabinet-level members and senior administration officials, including US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and US Export-Import Bank President Reta Jo Lewis. White House National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan co-chair the Council.
To achieve its goals, the Order mandates that the Council:
- Recommend procedures and best practices for interagency cooperation and “coordination on data collection and analysis.”
- Identify budgetary and other resources necessary to “support supply chain resilience” and “to identify, address, mitigate, and prevent supply chain risks, shocks, and disruptions.”
- Recommend administrative actions to further supply chain resilience.
- “[C]oordinate with other interagency bodies managing policy areas that affect the integrity of supply chains.”
- Coordinate with agencies to ensure that “operations related to building critical supply chain resilience . . . promote[] a fair, open, and competitive marketplace[.]”
The Order also requires the Council to “conduct a quadrennial supply chain review of industries critical to national or economy security.” The review must include recommendations concerning:
- Federal incentives “necessary to attract and retain private sector investments in the supply chains for critical goods and materials” as well as “other essential goods, materials, and services[;].”
- A strategic plan for engagement with allies and partners to “strengthen global supply chain resilience in critical sectors.”
- “[A]ctions for the insulation of federal supply chain analyses and actions from conflicts of interest, corruption, or the appearance of impropriety[;].”
- “[P]otential legislative changes” to promote supply chain resilience.
- “[R]eforms to domestic and international trade rules and agreements.”
- “Education and workforce reforms . . . to strengthen the domestic industrial base for critical goods and materials” as well as “other essential goods, materials, and services.”
- Steps to ensure US supply chain policies “support small businesses and family-owned small- and mid-sized farming operations, prevent monopolization, strengthen critical infrastructure, and empower workers to advocate for their rights and quality jobs,” as well as “encourage economic growth in underserved communities . . . and promote the geographic dispersal of economic activity across all regions of the United States.”
The Council is set to meet semiannually, although the co-chairs may call additional meetings. Interested parties in US supply chain actions should continue to monitor the Council’s announcements and corresponding measures, as it may provide valuable insights into what policy tools the United States might use to advance its “reshoring,” “friendshoring”, and supply chain diversification goals, including via interagency, or even global, initiatives.
