Analysts and former federal officials said on Monday that the U.S. must decrease its dependence on Beijing for components of essential medicines and called for congressional action to incentivize U.S. pharmaceutical production.
[May 7, 2018 | Inside US Trade]
“Eighty percent of the active ingredients in medicines come from China and India,” Rosemary Gibson, senior advisor at the Hastings Center – a New York-based bioethics research center – said during a May 7 event hosted at George Washington University.
However, she added, that number “obfuscates America’s deep dependence on China” because “Indian companies manufacture many active ingredients but may depend on China for the raw material.”
Those ingredients, she continued, are used in everything from antibiotics to contraceptives and impact “every citizen in the U.S.”
Dan Slane, former commissioner with U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said lawmakers should consider ways to “incentivize drug companies to manufacture in the United States.”
