We won’t let overseas chokepoints cause U.S. drug shortages again
By Peter Navarro | The Washington Times | August 21, 2025
OPINION:
America cannot be secure, prosperous or sovereign if our medicine cabinet depends on foreign adversaries.
The pandemic emergency revealed the dangers of import dependence up and down the global drug chain. Hospitals rationed generics. Pharmacies couldn’t fill pediatric antibiotics. When Shanghai’s lockdown idled a single plant that makes the contrast dye used in computed tomography scans — the rapid X-ray images doctors use to spot strokes, clots and internal bleeding — U.S. hospitals spent weeks rationing scans. One overseas choke point rippled through American emergency rooms.
A lot of America’s generic medicines depend on active pharmaceutical ingredients sourced from China and India, and India relies heavily on Chinese inputs. That is a textbook strategic vulnerability.
President Trump’s strategy to address this vulnerability is three-pronged. First, his recent executive order readies and fills the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve to stockpile the active pharmaceutical ingredients we need in a crisis. Second, the administration will harness federal purchasing to create durable demand for U.S.-made medicines. Third, we will harden supply by accelerating advanced manufacturing and building an early warning system for shortages.