 This massive Air Force C-17 plane landed in the U.S. Sunday, carrying precious cargo, 78,000 pounds of hypoallergenic formula from Switzerland. These are the first two flights of Operation Fly Formula, as the Biden administration works to ease a nationwide shortage. President Biden invoking the Defense Production Act. The wartime law allows the government to force suppliers to give formula manufacturers the key ingredients they desperately need. If the federal government just backed off and let the market function like it's supposed to, we wouldn't need military intervention or emergency policies designed for war to stock grocery store shelves with baby formula. This crisis is largely the result of protectionism, regulation and central planning of the sort that both Democrats and Republicans want more of in Washington. Why was the Biden administration so slow to respond to this crisis? Reporters want to know why the government didn't respond more quickly to this shortage. But the actual solution is for the government to be less involved entirely. I do wonder, Dr. Caleb, if this is a shortage that you believe could have been prevented. Do you think the FDA was too slow here? Are you disturbed? A better question is, why didn't the Biden administration clear the way for the private sector to react to price signals, like it does in every other industry? Food suppliers would have started stockpiling European-made formulas months ago if only U.S. tariffs and regulations weren't an obstacle. So how does this work in practice? First, the federal government prohibits importing many European-made baby formulas simply because they fail to meet FDA labeling requirements. But Europe is the world's leading exporter of baby formula, thanks to major producers based in Germany, the Netherlands and Britain. If FDA labeling regulations are so necessary, why is it that infants all over the globe safely consume formula made in Europe? Meanwhile, about 98% of the formula sold in the United States is produced domestically. We've sealed ourselves off from a robust and safe global market. In addition to the labeling requirements, the government imposes huge tariffs on foreign formula to protect domestic manufacturers and the American dairy industry. Now the U.S. is heroically flying in European-made baby formula. But just a year ago, border patrol officers were bragging about heroically seizing it. These two policies of regulation and protectionism work in tandem to scare away foreign suppliers. For example, let's say you're running a baby formula manufacturing firm in Germany. You would have zero incentive to spend the money to earn FDA approval for your labels because high tariffs would make your product too expensive to compete in the U.S. market. Our retailers need to have the flexibility to actually sell and our consumers to buy whatever type of product that they have and to do so safely. So we've got to waive a bunch of regulations that traditionally make sense but don't make sense in this crisis. Did European-made baby formula suddenly become less hazardous? Does passing formula through the hands of the U.S. military magically make it safe for American babies to drink? Or maybe the regulations and tariffs are designed to protect big businesses, not babies, and never should have existed in the first place. Utah Senator Mike Lee introduced a bill that would temporarily waive the tariffs on baby formula and remove the FDA labeling regulations. But how about scrapping them all together? There's also an important lesson here for economic nationalists who claim that international trade is a vulnerability. Excluding even more foreign-made products is critical for our national security, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley argued last year. He has suggested tightening the Made in America rules that already govern federal procurement to include the entire commercial market. If Hawley got his way, all industries could become just as vulnerable to supply shocks as baby formula. Will we one day have to replace our $2.5 trillion international shipping and logistics industry with emergency military aircraft criss-crossing the skies? The Biden administration and Congress get to come off like heroes, rushing to feed American babies left to go hungry because of the supposed cruelty of the free market. But that's all in act. Don't be fooled about the real cause of this shortage.