Posted on 02/28/2020 10:02:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Until about the third week of January, only a few pharmaceutical executives, drug-safety inspectors and dogged China hawks cared that a large share of the world’s supply of antibiotics depends on a handful of Chinese factories. These include a cluster in Inner Mongolia, a northern province of windswept deserts, grasslands and unlovely industrial towns. Then came the covid-19 outbreak, and quarantine controls that locked down factories, ports and whole cities across China.
Chinese leaders insist that they are well on the way to conquering the virus, allowing them to reopen “leading enterprises and key links with important influence” in global supply chains. A victory over the novel coronavirus will once again demonstrate “the notable advantages of leadership by the Communist Party of China”, President Xi Jinping told 170,000 officials by video-conference on February 23rd. But even if all those boasts come true, foreign governments and business bosses will not quickly forget a frightening lesson: for some vital products, they depend on one country.
Where once only a few specialists worried about the market share enjoyed by the industrial chemists of Hohhot or Shijiazhuang, China’s dominance of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (api) sector is now the subject of hard questions in Washington’s corridors of power and the chancelleries of Europe.
Ending the world’s dependence on Chinese apis would not be a technical challenge. China has not been dominant for long. America’s last penicillin fermenter closed in 2004, as clusters of Chinese factories, many state-owned or subsidised, offered efficiencies that foreign rivals could not match. Rather, change would involve upending well-established political and economic theories, starting with the wisdom of allowing private companies to seek out the best-value goods, with little heed paid to their origin.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
The Ecommunist has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for offshoring everything and anything to china. What hypocrites.
“Covid-19 is teaching businesses hard lessons about China-only supply chains”
the only thing good that might come out of this ...
Govt doesn’t have to take over the pharmaceutical industry, just require that they make enough supplies here.
From the sounds of the Dems I thought Canada had all the cheap drugs, why not just buy from there?
It'll just be passed on to the consumers.
How about requiring all imported drugs, and precursor chemicals to be tested for quality and purity (add more cost to outsourcing). >
It'll just be passed on to the consumers.
H How about reducing tax and regulation on US manufacturing?
They just got a big tax cut.
That didn't happen with Trump's current China tariffs.
It’s about time. The most infuriating example was using inferior Chinese steel for our military and infrastructure applications. Our President started to correct that but I haven’t followed up on it.
Thanks.
Lol
Yeah it did.
So what? It is worth paying more to have national production capacity. If we get 95% of antibiotics from China, what happens if there is a war with China? There are things that are more important than getting the absolute lowest price.
Oh, you’re right, everything got noticeably more expensive. What was I thinking?
.
Trump should make this China single source supply chain disaster the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
Lots of (cheap) Chinese produced goods we take for granted will be drying up soon. The fatal weak link is Chana. US manufacturing needs to be the cure. China needs to be cut loose for many reasons. Not only are they a communist led sworn enemy of the US, but they are also an economic time bomb.
Landslide results if Trump drives this message home for the next 8 months and accelerates manufacturing ( especially medical and pharmaceuticals) in the US.
This is a National Security issue.
I just said to hubby, earlier today....
Who is the ONE guy that has been SCREAMING about supplies Made in China/our dependency on China, for decades?
Trump!
He could’ve taken this crisis of the supply chain/meds/machine and auto parts/etc and stormed out with....LOOK!! Here’s the situation..because your Congress peeps sold you down the river, for decades, by sending just about ALL manufacturing to China....you will be experiencing shortages.
What an opportunity! Talk about never letting a crisis go to waste!
It’s a made to order re-election landslide platform.
Americans are about to get a throat punch wake up call and hard knock lesson in single source supply chain logistics failure on top of a pandemic.
This is a National Security Issue.
On January 1, 2020, these types would have mercilessly mocked us and laughed at us for having such a backwards populist opinion.
President Trump knew that it was unreasonable and unsafe for the US economy to be so dependent on China. He was ridiculed for his tariffs which now appear to have prevented a major economic catastrophe due to US companies moving their operations out of China over the past couple years.
Last night, Melissa Francis from FOX Business Network, was on Tucker Carlson Tonight and she shared this observation:
Because he [President Trump] started this trade war that was costing companies money, they went out and set up different ways that, well maybe we can get this from here, here’s our second, maybe we’ll do this if it [the trade war] doesn’t get solved, and companies have either moved or found a different way…
…But it’s ironic that President Trump sort of warned us about this relationship and as usual faced so much ridicule over it and now we see yet another reason why we shouldn’t be totally dependent on this one country for so many things...
“On January 1, 2020, these types would have mercilessly mocked us and laughed at us for having such a backwards populist opinion.”
Fact! I suspect many of those types are never Trumpers. I’ve had my share of run ins with them here at FR over the years.
The evidence seems to indicate I was more correct than they were.
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