A plane from Germany with more than 31 tons of cans of baby milk powder intended for the American market, affected by a major shortage, landed on Sunday morning in the United States, according to images broadcast on American television channels.
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President Joe Biden had, a little earlier, announced on Twitter that a plane “laden with more than 70,000 pounds (more than 31 tons, editor’s note) of infant formula (…) is about to land in Indiana”.
“A flight departed overnight from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, full of powdered baby milk, and will land in Indiana (Sunday) morning,” said White House economic adviser Brian Deese. on the CNN channel.
On board, 132 pallets of Nestlé brand infant formula.
Other deliveries of powdered milk “will arrive at the beginning of the week” on other flights, he added.
The United States has been experiencing a shortage of baby milk for several months, caused by supply and labor problems linked to Covid-19, then worsened by the closure, in February, of a factory of the manufacturer Abbott in Michigan, after a product recall suspected of causing the deaths of two infants.
“We had a manufacturer who did not follow the rules and who made formula that risked making babies sick,” lamented Brian Deese.
Abbott CEO Robert Ford apologized in the columns of the Washington Post on Saturday for the shortage that affects thousands of American families, for whom finding milk for their baby has become a real obstacle course.
But beyond that, wonders Joe Biden’s main economic adviser, “how did we come to a market 90% controlled by three companies?”
He insisted on the need to think about how to “bring more competition into the American” economy, to “have more suppliers of baby milk so that no one company has such control over production chains. And we’re going to have to work on it.”
In addition, when asked about the probability that the United States will experience a recession in the coming months, Brian Deese was content to emphasize that “there are always risks”, but wanted to be reassuring about the solidity of the American economy.
“There is no doubt that the difficulties are great,” he acknowledged, citing in particular inflation, which slowed down a little in April, to 8.3%, after reaching in March 8, 5%, its record for 40 years.
