US taking aim at industrial labour shortfall and China supply dependency, Pentagon official says
- Senior defence official tells top government panel on China policy that gap between open positions and available workers estimated to stand at 2.1 million by 2030
- In addition, ‘China’s competitive pricing and aggressive market capture strategy’ has led Pentagon suppliers to source materials from producers in rival nation
The US Defence Department said on Thursday it plans to use the country’s Defence Production Act (DPA) more aggressively to address shortages in key materials and industrial workers needed to produce its hardware, vulnerabilities accentuated by a migration of its supply chain to China.
Speaking before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), acting assistant secretary of defence for industrial base policy Deborah Rosenblum warned that her department relied too heavily on China for minerals like rare earths and microelectronic components, calling such vulnerabilities “a problem 70 years in the making”.
Rosenblum told members of the USCC, the top US government advisory panel on China policy, that the Pentagon would use DPA funds on programmes aimed at bolstering the domestic industrial workforce, singling out shipbuilding as a key component.
Investments made to modernise America’s military while reducing supply-chain vulnerabilities would “only be as effective if we have a manufacturing workforce here in this country that has the capacity to carry forward” with the Pentagon’s major modernisation programmes, Rosenblum said.
The US must contend with a gap of 2.1 million by 2030 between unfilled industrial manufacturing positions and available workers, she added in written testimony.