Pressure From Abroad, Weakening at Home

America’s medical supply is under pressure from abroad and is weakening due to policy failure at home. Most of the conversation in Washington only names the first.

Look abroad first. The CCP has built a coordinated, funded campaign to lead the global biopharmaceutical industry, from the upstream chemistry and manufacturing that supplies the world’s medicines, to the genomic data that trains tomorrow’s discoveries, to the clinical trials that carry them to market. China already leads on that last measure. In 2024, it listed roughly 7,100 clinical trials to America’s 6,000. The CCP treats biopharma as a long-term strategic objective. The United States should treat it as one too, and weigh the national security stakes of treating it as anything less.

Now look here at home. Federal research funding, the foundation American science was built on, is being cut while competitors accelerate. Visa and immigration barriers push the talent we train toward rivals. Intellectual property protections face pressure from frameworks never built for biopharma. Review timelines at the FDA lag behind what the moment requires. Price control proposals compress the margins that research and manufacturing depend on. None of these problems originate abroad. Each one is a choice the country can change.

Here is how the pressure compounds. When the only named threat is the foreign one, the policy response defaults to building a wall. Tariffs. Onshoring mandates. Buy America rules applied to molecules. The instinct sounds firm and does more harm at home. The diagnosis is correct. The dependence is real and dangerous. The response is what fails. A wall raises costs and cuts access to critical medicine. It does not build new labs, train scientists, or move first-in-class discovery back onto American soil. You cannot tariff your way to scientific leadership or national security.

There is a response that works. Pair the security instinct with investment here at home. Protect the capital, the research base, and the workforce that translate discovery into patient care. Then diversify the supply base to trusted and allied nations, so no single point of failure sits inside a competitor’s borders or our own. American presence in allied networks carries American standards. Retreat behind a wall, and the standard-setting goes to someone else. Close ourselves off, and the rest of the world goes to the CCP.

This is the lane ABI works in. Strong domestic capacity and trusted networks, held together. We support the instinct to secure the supply. Securing it means building. Blocking alone will not.

That is where the work happens: real solutions that hold American leadership and competitiveness.

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