This claim suggests that the U.S. food supply chain is already effective and resilient, and that transformation or national-level planning is unnecessary. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant vulnerabilities in the food supply chain, such as disruptions in meatpacking plants, shortages of labor in agriculture and trucking, and difficulty in shifting food supplies from commercial to retail sectors. The pandemic highlighted weaknesses in the system that national coordination or transformation could address, such as improving worker protections, enhancing logistics, or diversifying supply chains.
To say that it’s “critical to remove barriers in the food supply chain” is oversimplifying. While some regulatory flexibility, such as relaxing transportation restrictions or allowing temporary worker visa programs, helped ease supply chain issues during the pandemic, other interventions were critical for public health and safety. For example, the government had to impose health and safety regulations in meatpacking plants to protect workers, many of whom were disproportionately affected by the virus. Additionally, government assistance, such as financial support for farmers and direct aid to food banks, was vital in preventing food shortages.
In fact, Trump’s deregulations of the food supply chain during COVID had some predictably terrible results, and in fact, the Trump administration was accused by House lawmakers of “exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to push [the Administration’s] reckless deregulatory agenda.” [Source]6
More breakdown of this statement in the full contextual analysis of Section 3.1: Department of Agriculture here.