The U.S. Department of Commerce, in collaboration with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), hosted the inaugural Supply Chain Summit today. The event brought together leaders from government, industry, academia, and civil society to discuss efforts by the Biden-Harris Administration and industry to transition from reacting to global supply chain disruptions to proactively strengthening supply chain resilience.
“The Biden-Harris Administration knows securing American supply chains is vital to protecting our national security and enhancing our economic competitiveness,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “By working with industry and taking an analytical, proactive approach, we are working to prevent the kind of supply chain failures that drove up costs for Americans during the pandemic and to create new economic opportunities for communities across the nation.”
Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves added, “The actions we’re taking at the Commerce Department to secure our supply chains are possible because of the work we’ve done since day one to leverage our innovative expertise and capabilities to put risk assessment and resiliency at the forefront of our commercial engagement.” He emphasized that mitigating the impact was step one and turning reactive policies into proactive policies became their second chapter.
At the Summit, as part of ongoing efforts by the Biden-Harris Administration, the Department of Commerce’s Supply Chain Center unveiled a diagnostic supply chain risk assessment tool known as SCALE. This tool uses a comprehensive set of indicators to assess structural supply chain risk across various sectors of the U.S. economy. The SCALE tool aims to enable more proactive and strategic addressing of supply chain risks by comparing risks across industries and providing detailed assessments.
“To be proactive, we need the right insights and ideas, and we need to make data more actionable,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Analysis Grant Harris. “SCALE is a first-of-its-kind analytics tool because it revolutionizes our ability to understand systemic supply chain vulnerabilities that pose risks to U.S. economic and national security.”
Notable speakers at the Summit included Secretary Raimondo, Deputy Secretary Graves, Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk, Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, Assistant Secretary Harris, and Ambassador Michael Froman. These leaders addressed how critical supply chain resilience is for U.S. economic and national security and highlighted public-private cooperation's role in these efforts.
To further enhance global supply chain resilience, seven new strategic partnerships with key stakeholders across industry and academia were announced by the Department of Commerce. These partnerships aim to promote global competitiveness among U.S. industries while making businesses more resilient.
Additionally, the International Trade Administration announced a competitive process aimed at developing new data or analysis that can expand risk indicators incorporated into SCALE.
The Department remains committed to advancing outcomes from this year's Supply Chain Summit through continued collaboration with industry leaders, small businesses, and international partners in building resilient, sustainable, and diverse supply chains.
For more information about key outcomes from this year's Supply Chain Summit, please review policy actions outlined in the Supply Chain Resilience Fact Sheet.
