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Yet another study is sounding the alarm about American reliance on Chinese manufacturing. This time, the U.S. Pharmacopeia is highlighting that a vast majority of America's pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients come directly from China.
According to the study, nearly 60 percent of all key starting materials come from other countries, and 41% of those are directly from China, which is, at best, an openly hostile nation. China expert and author Gordon Chang called out this problem, which he says we should have solved already.
He said, "These are things that we need to manufacture. We should have started doing this after COVID when we saw how critically reliant we were on China." Chang says this gives China a key advantage over us on all fronts and key leverage in any negotiations with the United States.
Chang warned, "China could decide not to ship any of that to the United States. We wouldn't be able to get any of those key starting materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients." That could, of course, devastate the American supply of pharmaceuticals and lead to massive price hikes, not to mention the national security implications of not being able to treat the illnesses of vast numbers of Americans, including members of the armed services.
He added that China is bringing all of its industrial power to bear against the United States, and we need to respond by fighting fire with fire. According to Chang, "This is an emergency; this is not peacetime as we know it. We're going to have to take extraordinary measures."