Fox News says Biden team is lying about supply shortages but disproves its own report

Retailers have been warning that problems in the global supply chain may lead to shortages of items in stores, particularly during the holiday season. Fox News on Wednesday falsely claimed that the Biden administration has been lying about possible supply chain problems that could affect the Christmas delivery of goods. But as it alleged mixed messages, the network shared quotes that offered the same message.

Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” from the White House, Fox White House correspondent Peter Doocy claimed, “The story about the supply chains around here is different depending on who you talk to.”

As evidence of this purported difference, Doocy played a clip from an interview with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and read a quote from an anonymous White House source in a report from Reuters.

In the clip, from an interview on Tuesday’s edition of the “CBS Evening News,” Yellen said: “There may be isolated shortages of goods and services in the coming months, but there is an ample supply of goods, and I think there’s no reason for consumers to panic about the absence of goods that they’re going to want to acquire at Christmas.”

And according to the Reuters report from Tuesday, a senior White House official said, “There will be things that people can’t get” for the holidays due to disruptions, adding that there is no reason to panic: “At the same time, a lot of these goods are hopefully substitutable by other things. … I don’t think there’s any real reason to be panicked, but we all feel the frustration and there’s a certain need for patience to help get through a relatively short period of time.”

Contrary to what Doocy claimed, the messages are not different. Both told the public that some disruptions are expected but that there won’t be an absence of goods available.

The false claim from Fox comes on the same day that the Biden administration announced that President Joe Biden will meet with business, port, and union leaders to discuss what can be done to get more goods flowing through ports. The administration also announced that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California would be moving toward 24/7 operations to help alleviate some supply issues.

Several Fox News hosts have attacked the Biden administration over supply-chain problems, and the network has hosted Republican officials making similar arguments.

But there is not a ton of discussion about how the problem was made worse by the Trump administration. Supply chains have been disrupted by  the spread of COVID-19, but were also affected by the Trump administration’s decision to engage in a trade war with China, according to experts.

And despite Fox’s misreporting, the Biden administration has been working on the issue for months. In February, it announced that it had formed a task force to examine the issue, and in June the task force released guidelines for future actions to address supply chain problems.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.