President Joe Biden convened the inaugural White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience on Nov. 27, in which Biden announced nearly 30 new actions aimed at strengthening the United States’ supply chains.

The council is comprised of:

• National Security Advisor and National Economic Advisor (co-chairs)
• Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, Labor, Transportation, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs; 
• the Attorney General
• Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and Small Business Administration
• Directors of National Intelligence, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
• U.S. Trade Representative
• Senior officials from the Executive Office of the President and other agencies

Listed first on a White House fact sheet explaining those supply chain actions is the use of the Defense Production Act to have the Health and Human Services Department invest in the domestic production of necessary medicines deemed crucial for national security. The HHS has identified $35 million in investment for the production of injectable medicines materials.

Listed second was cross-government supply chain data-sharing capabilities, led by the Department of Commerce’s new Supply Chain Center that integrates industry expertise and data analytics to develop supply chain risk assessment tools and analysis, aimed to drive actions to increase risk resilience. Meanwhile, the White House said shipping companies have begun to utilize data from the Department of Transportation’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) program on freight logistics.

Other actions are aimed to improve supply chains through better access to affordable, reliable energy and critical technology. These actions include the following:

• Department of Defense to publish its first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) guide, which builds on the $714 million in Defense Production Act investments it has made in 2023 to support defense-critical supply chains
• $275 million in grant selections from the Department of Energy for its Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling Grant Program
• $196 million in investments from the USDA to strengthen domestic food supply chains
• Launch of the quadrennial supply chain review, with the first such review to be completed by Dec. 31, 2024
• Smart manufacturing plan
• New Resilience Center and tabletop exercises for supply chain disruptions
• Launch of DoT Multimodal Freight Office
• Monitoring of climate impacts
• Energy and critical mineral supply chain readiness
• Defense supply chain mapping and risk management

Find much more info about these and the Biden Administration’s new supply chain actions from its fact sheet here.