Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) on Thursday said during a Breitbart News policy event that the coronavirus pandemic proved the urgency with which the United States needs to bring drug manufacturing back from China.
Banks said at the event that his question to now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was about how the United States can “untangle this mess with 30 to 40 percent of manufacturing occurs in China, our biggest enemy.”
“If we learned anything from COVID and how they leveraged that moment is that we should get all of that out of China as much as we can,” he told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at the Breitbart News event.
“When they [China] manipulate the holes in our laws for their benefit and screw great American companies like Eli Lilly in their favor and flood our country with dangerous and cheap ingredients and compounding of GLP-1 [E.G. Ozempic] … that’s not America First,” he said.
Banks explained that “fortunately we have a team at HHS,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other regulatory agencies to combat this issue.
Last October, Banks urged the Food and Drug Administration to strengthen oversight of the American drug supply amid concerns about low-quality foreign manufacturers, especially in China and India.
He wrote in his letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary:
The FDA must do more to protect the U.S. drug supply. Unfortunately, shoddy foreign pharmaceutical plants and unscrupulous domestic producers that import from them are nothing new. The public expects the FDA to protect them from impure drugs by identifying them at the source and blocking them from entering the supply chain. The FDA’s import alerts demonstrate the extent of the problem. Among all facilities that were issued import alerts, 39% were located in China and 13% were located in India, versus the 10% average for other regions. In fiscal year 2024, the FDA only inspected 28% of Chinese facilities and 33% of Indian facilities in the Site Catalog (the list of facilities known to manufacture human pharmaceuticals for the U.S.). Of the facilities that were inspected, Indian manufacturers had the highest rate of serious “Current Good Manufacturing Practice” violations, at 13%.
Federal and state officials, including 38 members of the National Association of Attorneys General and 80 members of Congress, such as Sens. Banks and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), have called on the FDA, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Trade Commission to increase oversight over online sellers of compounded GLP-1 receptor antagonists and unregulated active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is also speaking at the Breitbart News event, has proposed legislation that would bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to America. Breitbart News detailed:
China produces an overwhelming majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used for drugs in America. This includes 95 percent of imports of ibuprofen, 70 percent of acetaminophen, and 40-45 percent of penicillin.
Axios reported that the coronavirus outbreak has jeopardized the American supply of roughly 150 pharmaceuticals, “including antibiotics, generics,” and brand-name drugs. Some of these drugs do not have alternatives on the market.
“When they manipulate the holes in our laws for their benefit and screw great American companies like Eli Lilly in their favor and flood our country with dangerous and cheap ingredients and compounding of GLP-1 [E.G. Ozempic] … that’s not America First,” Banks said at the Breitbart event.
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