Earlier today, Cato economist Scott Lincicome shared a Reason piece by Eric Boehm about the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the critical baby formula shortage:
"The baby formula shortage isn't the result of there not being enough planes to transport baby formula from Europe to the US; it's the result of the federal govt making it nearly impossible to transport baby formula from Europe to the US" –@EricBoehm87 https://t.co/g4kY9RfU9D
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
America’s current shortage of baby formula is a crisis created, in significant part, by the failures of government policy aimed at protecting domestic companies from foreign competition.
But rather than sweep aside the rules and regulations that have contributed to this mess, the Biden administration and Congress are gearing up to address a problem created by industrial policy with…more industrial policy. We’re now weeks into the crisis, but the best response that our political leaders have been able to muster is an attempt to use public resources to duplicate the market response that would have solved (or at least eased) the mess if it had merely been allowed to operate. The entire saga is a sad and infuriating commentary about the entirely predictable failures of central planning.
Read the whole thing. If you do, you’ll be way ahead of Oliver Willis, who evidently didn’t even bother with it:
We have a baby formula problem because the lax oversight of the free market led to a baby formula plant with dirty equipment that killed children https://t.co/hcLhvrzuEk
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 20, 2022
We cut back on FDA inspectors and already the FDA doesn't have enough power to pull dangerous products. This is a "limited government" problem.
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 20, 2022
A limited government problem? What?
This is what happened when we just let the free market do it's thing https://t.co/mqNM78ytrl pic.twitter.com/oKfpeQ8npC
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 20, 2022
What happens when we let Oliver Willis do his thing is that we have to call him out for being wrong yet again.
In this case, Lincicome (and Reason) took care of the heavy lifting:
The federal government (via WIC) accounts for more than *half* of US baby formula sales, fueling domestic concentration & discouraging investment, and we have tariff and non-tariff (FDA) walls around the country, blocking almost all imports.
Very market. Much free. https://t.co/YoL8Rb4UCU
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
But hey don't take my crazy libertarian word for it… https://t.co/I2K0cVQFZG
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
Oof.
guess that explains the lack of fda inspectors and enforcement
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 20, 2022
Perfectly consistent with regulatory capture, TBH. Regardless, you'll rarely find me disagreeing abt FDA incompetence, and overall it has nothing to do with whether this particular market was "free" by any reasonable definition. Distorted and possibly corrupt? Sure. Free? Nah.
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
The free market didn’t build this; the federal government made this happen.
Siiiiiigh https://t.co/cFmV5xgHZC
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
More from Reason’s Robby Soave:
In an interview on my YouTube show, Rising, former FDA associate commissioner Peter Pitts confirms that the agency doesn’t view this as a safety issue, strictly speaking: U.S. health inspectors know the European products are safe. Their problem is that the products are labeled in a manner that does not meet the expectations of the U.S. government.
“The difference between European baby formula and American baby formula, more or less, is that the labeling is different,” says Pitts. “The knot in getting that product into the U.S. isn’t safety, it’s a regulatory issue. I don’t want to say it’s a nitty issue, but it’s certainly something the FDA could have jumped on a lot quicker.”
Government bureaucracy is not a free market problem, Oliver.
As usual, @owillis doesn't have a clue.
The market would have solved this. It is GOVERNMENT that is causing this mess.
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) May 20, 2022
We’re not sure why this is so difficult for progressives like Oliver Willis to understand.
it just drives me crazy that people are still blaming "the free market" in this case – especially now that the trade/WIC and other regulatory stuff is well-known. Even many folks on the left are saying we need to reform WIC and encourage imports!
Frustrating.
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2022
There are few better examples in recent years of government regulation and tariffs causing a disaster.
I mean, literally, any single govt measure that would have been scaled down would have allowed us to avoid this train wreck. Just ONE.
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) May 20, 2022
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