Earlier this week, in Moving Your Manufacturing From China: Look South (Again) to Mexico and Puerto Rico, I highlighted a recent New York Post editorial that decried America’s “serious over-reliance on China for pharmaceutical production”, and called for Puerto Rico to once again become a “central hub of U.S. drug manufacturing”.....MORE
Then on the same day CNBC reported the introduction of a bipartisan Senate bill “that would funnel $100 million to develop U.S. manufacturing of drugs”. The bill’s sponsors—Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ)—are “concerned about possible drug shortages amid the coronavirus outbreak”. According to CNBC:
About 72% of manufacturers of pharmaceutical ingredients supplying the U.S. are overseas, including 13% in China, according to FDA testimony last year. That could make U.S drug companies vulnerable to shortages if COVID-19 forces factories to shutter and shipments to the United States to stall, experts have warned.This bill “is at least the third legislative proposal addressing the issue”. The other two measures are also bipartisan in nature, suggesting broad support for incentivizing, and in some cases forcing, a return of pharma to the United States.
U.S. legislators are not just concerned about pharma offshoring generally, but about China specifically. Introducing the Pharmaceutical Independent Long-Term Readiness Reform Act, Rep. Vicky Hartzler (D-MO) bluntly stated:
China having control over the production of our military’s medicine poses a grave national security threat. Not only does it open the possibility of them deliberately manipulating our servicemember’s medical regimens to cause physical harm, but the Chinese government’s lack of proper oversight and regulatory standards on prescription drugs is also deeply alarming to me. We need to ensure that our military’s medicine is American-made.The bill’s cosponsor, Rep. John Garamendi (R-CA), piled on.
Right now, China has the ability to attack the United States without firing a single shot by poisoning our servicemembers’ medicines or cutting off their supply. The Chinese government is the principal developer of generic prescriptions, which account for approximately 90 percent of pharmaceuticals. China’s chokehold on the global pharmaceutical market leaves our servicemembers and our nation vulnerable to attack. We need to reinvigorate the United States industrial base to produce generic medicines and antibiotics domestically.
Things might be even more interesting than this piece describes.
On March 4 CCP mouthpiece Xinhua published "http://www.xinhuanet.com/2020-03/04/c_1125660473.htm" ("Righteous, the world should thank China") which contains the rather ominous paragraphs:
...If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it will also announce strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the United States. Then the United States will be caught in the ocean of new crown viruses.Sorry for the Google Translate, my favorite Mandarin translator is on strike until a vaccine for coronavirus is found and/or someone buys her a helicopter.
According to the US CDC officials, most masks in the United States are made in China and imported from China. If China bans the export of masks to the United States, the United States will fall into the mask shortage, and the most basic measures to prevent the new crown virus are Can't do it.
Also according to the US CDC officials, most of the drugs in the United States are imported, and some drugs are imported from Europe. However, Europe also places the production base of these drugs in China, so more than 90% of the US imported drugs are Related to China. The implication is that at this time, as long as China announces that its drugs are as domestic as possible and banned exports, the United States will fall into the hell of the new crown pneumonia epidemic....
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xinhuanet.com%2F2020-03%2F04%2Fc_1125660473.htm
