Fmr. Obama Econ. Adviser Furman: ‘Government Policies’ ‘Create Monopolies’ on Formula

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight,” Jason Furman, who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton and is currently a Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School, argued that there are many policy problems that have contributed to the formula shortage like import restrictions and tariffs and the fact that “We have government policies that create monopolies for it here.”

Furman stated, “There are so many different failures of government policy, many of them at the FDA. They layer it on top of a long set of policies. We don’t allow baby formula in from countries like Germany, even though it’s safer and probably better than our baby formula. We put tariffs on it when it comes from Canada. We have government policies that create monopolies for it here. All of those are problems. The Biden administration is sweeping some of those away, but we’re going to need to rely, to some degree, on the rest of the world to help us out right now, and they’d like to. We need to let them.”

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