CPA advocates for domestic manufacturing of essential generic drugs, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other critical health care products because it is vital for our country’s health security and national security.
COVID-19 showed that in a pandemic, the United States cannot depend on other countries for essential medicines and other medical supplies. Many countries banned exports of them to assure they had enough for their own people.
It is a national security imperative that our country is not dependent on unfriendly nations. At the height of the pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party threatened to withhold essential drugs from America. This threat reveals the inclination by some nations to use medicines as an economic and geopolitical weapon. We must have the capability to manufacture medicines and medical supplies necessary for the country’s public health and survival.
Tariffs on pharmaceutical companies isn’t just good economic policy — it benefits national security and public health.
Imports did not vanish, but their growth rate was flat at zero percent in February compared to January after nearly two months of importers rushing in orders ahead of tariffs. February goods and services imports were $401 billion, a statistically insignificant change from January, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said.
Members of the House Ways and Means Committee gave U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer a piece of their mind on Wednesday during a four-and-a-half-hour hearing—double the time he spent with the Senate Finance Committee the day before.
The Trump administration is not backing down from its America First trade agenda, and Congress has granted the executive branch the authority to use emergency powers to impose tariffs in support of that agenda, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told the Senate Finance Committee in a hearing on Tuesday.
The United States is amid a dangerous drug shortage that endangers patients, undermines our health care system and exposes a deep vulnerability to national security. America’s overwhelming reliance on foreign manufacturers for generic drugs is at the center of it.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is today the main source of new drugs in this country – indeed the world, because America leads in the field. It has a critical importance to America’s health. Less well known is its huge, positive, economic impact.
