GOVERNMENT: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: The Great Baby Formula Shortage of 2022.

With domestic supply chains snarled, it would have made sense for American grocery stores to turn to foreign producers for replacement supplies of baby formula. Unfortunately, there are “absurdly high” tariffs on imported formula, explains Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

“There are these distribution channels that are basically not established” because the tariffs make it too costly, she says. “And we’re talking about baby formula. This is a necessity and we shouldn’t be taxing it that high or at all.”

It took last year’s crisis for Congress to consider lifting those tariffs—and only on a temporary basis. The dairy lobby and other special interests like the isolated, and fragile, American market for baby formula just the way it is.

Much more at the link.