Yellen urges more domestic production

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that U.S. reliance on foreign supply chains has proved a vulnerability and that the country needs to produce more critical goods domestically in order to protect its economic and national security.

“It’s possible that policies that people will describe as protectionist are going to be necessary in order to create the appropriate incentives to produce things at home,” Yellen said in an interview for a conference hosted by the Financial Times.

“Certainly we want to work with other countries — with our allies and partners — to address supply-chain resilience on a collective basis,” she said in remarks aired Tuesday. “So, I don’t think this is just about the United States making everything at home, but in some cases that may be part of the answer.”

Yellen last week also cited trade measures in the context of the inflation discussion, saying that “tariffs do contribute to higher prices in the United States.”