Making China Weaker Does Not Necessarily Make America Stronger
China's share of global drug development climbed from 8 percent to more than 30 percent in a decade. Ours fell from 48 to 37. On current trend, Chinese-origin drugs could account for a third of FDA approvals by 2040, up from 5 percent today. A country that cannot secure its own medicines has surrendered a piece of its national readiness.
Washington's reflex is to wall off investment and access. We have run that play before. Tariffs did not rebuild solar, and they did not rebuild shipbuilding, where China now launches more than a thousand commercial vessels a year to our eight. Restriction manages the symptom. It does nothing about why China is gaining ground in an industry we should be leading.
"Making China weaker is not the same as making America stronger."
The way to win a contest is to out-build the other side. Restore NIH funding. Compress FDA review from years to months. Recruit the world's best scientists before someone else does. Secure the supply chain through domestic capacity and trusted allied networks. Line up FDA, NIH, Treasury, Defense, and the intelligence community behind one strategy instead of five.
America still runs the most productive biomedical research enterprise on earth. That lead is ours to defend or ours to lose. The policies that get us there are our choice.