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President Biden's top advisers now meet at least once a week to discuss how to tackle the supply chain crisis and curb rampant inflation.
The advisors discuss ways to relieves backlogs at US ports, how to recruit truck drivers and how to produce more semiconductors within the US, according to the New York Times.
The Biden administration is finally trying to grapple with persistent inflation that they for months insisted would be transitory. But on Monday, Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen said they expected it to persist until mid to late next year.
The consumer price index rose 5.4% in September from last year, up from August's gain of 5.3% and matching the increases in June and July.
'I agree, of course, we are going through a period of inflation that's higher than Americans have seen in a long time,' she said on CNN's State of the Union. 'And it's something that's obviously a concern and worrying them. But we haven't lost control.'
Yellen added that she expects inflation to return to a more 'normal' rate of around 2 per cent sometime next year.
'On a 12-month basis, the inflation rate will remain high into next year because of what's already happened. But I expect improvement by the middle to end of next year - second half of next year,' Yellen said.
That reality is straining Biden's push to pump trillions more into the economy through a social spending package and an infrastructure bill.
But the White House is arguing the worker shortage contributing to the supply crunch could be alleviated with their spending bill, with its child and
