Soon after beginning his second term, President Donald Trump rightly focused on a serious problem with infant formula by launching Operation Stork Speed. It’s aimed at expanding access to safe, reliable, and nutritious formula for American families, a problem that became very serious during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It also fits neatly within a broader Trump instinct: the United States should make more of what it needs at home, especially products as essential as those that nourish newborns. But here is the uncomfortable truth Washington hates to admit: if the administration wants to understand why the infant formula market is fragile, it should start by looking in the mirror.
The biggest problem in this market is not simply the result of corporate failure or foreign competition. It is the predictable result of overregulation, legal excess, and a policy structure that makes it harder, not easier, to manufacture formula in the U.S.
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This is no minor market. Formula is critical to millions of families, and the federal government is deeply entangled in it.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, WIC, serves about 41% of all U.S. infants. Department of Agriculture data show WIC infants consumed an estimated 56% of U.S. infant formula in 2018. The Government Accountability Office says that after Nestlé and Gerber transitioned out, only two manufacturers now hold WIC contracts nationwide.
That is not resilience. That is concentration bordering on vulnerability.
The FDA’s own long-term strategy acknowledges how concentrated the market has become: four companies controlled 99% of the market in 2022, and by 2024, the number of major manufacturers was down to three. Meanwhile, Reckitt, a British multinational consumer goods company, has been reviewing options for its subsidiary, Mead Johnson, and Perrigo, a manufacturer of private-label over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and nutritional products, began a strategic review of its infant formula business in November 2025.
Why would companies hesitate to invest? Start with the obvious economics. Formula plants require extraordinary sterility standards, major capital spending, and heavy regulatory oversight.
And the FDA is only now beginning the first comprehensive review of infant formula nutrient requirements since 1998. That lag matters. When regulators fail to modernize rules for nearly three decades, misinformation rushes in to fill the void.
The result has been confusion, mistrust, and a legal feeding frenzy. Manufacturers are battling expensive litigation, including high-profile premature-infant formula cases against Abbott and Reckitt.
Whether every case has merit is for courts to decide. But the broader effect is obvious: when companies face rising legal exposure on top of high compliance costs and thin margins, investment suffers.
This is where Trump’s health agenda runs into the dead hand of bureaucracy.
If the U.S. wants more domestic formula capacity, Washington must make it less punishing to build and expand. That means streamlining approvals, clarifying standards, modernizing nutrient rules, and creating a regulatory climate that welcomes serious new entrants instead of scaring them off.
Operation Stork Speed is already moving in the right direction by launching nutrient review, increasing contaminant testing, and trying to improve labeling clarity. But that is only half the job.
The other half is legal reform. A country cannot reshore critical manufacturing while tolerating a system in which litigation risk becomes a de facto industrial policy.
If Congress and the states want more formula made in-country, they should make it easier for judges to dispose of weak claims early and harder for the trial bar to turn federally regulated products into jackpot justice.
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Trump’s instinct is correct: U.S. babies should be fed by products made under America’s high standards, not by a brittle system dependent on foreign capacity and domestic hesitation.
But that goal will remain out of reach unless Washington stops sabotaging it with bureaucracy, delay, and lawsuit-driven economics.
Steve Forbes is chairman and editor in chief of Forbes Media.
