China could “shut down” the American healthcare system in mere weeks if the United States does not ramp up its medical manufacturing, co-founder and CEO of Blue Star NBR Scott Maier told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.
Speaking with host Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Maier explained how his synthetic rubber company is working to increase domestic production of disposable gloves to meet the nation’s needs without relying on Chinese suppliers.
“So we’re actually going to make the raw material, the nitrile butadiene rubber, the NBR itself — which is kind of a synthetic rubber because so many people have an allergy to the natural latex — and then take that NBR, and then make the gloves out of it,” he said.
Blue Star NBR has a 100 percent Continental United States (CONUS) supply chain, with the company sourcing the butadiene and acrylonitrile for the NBR from companies on the Gulf Coast.
“We have no foreign chemicals in our supply chain. This will be a 100 percent domestically-made glove,” Maier said.
The company was launched in 2021, with a “state-of-the-art” plant being built to employ nearly 2,500 Americans and begin production in Wytheville, Virginia.
NBR gloves are not only critical in the medical field, but also in rare earth refineries, semiconductor factories, and all across the food supply chain, Maier emphasized.
“Most people first assume, ‘Hey, it’s our doctors and nurses.’ And everyone knows you’re not going to have a doctor or nurse touch you without a pair of gloves on. But you know, that’s only about 30 percent of the use of gloves in the United States,” he said. “So to put it in perspective, we use 150 billion gloves annually in the U.S.”
“So it’s, you know, a critical part of our industrial manufacturing,” he continued. “And I think it really gets overlooked a lot of the time.”
The U.S. makes about 1.5 billion NBR gloves annually, just about one percent of what the country uses.
“Primarily, it’s the Far East,” the CEO explained. “You know, it used to be that Malaysia was the biggest supplier. But China has overtaken Malaysia, kind of, since 2021.”
According to him, China saw another critical supply chain “that they wanted to dominate, so they built 100 billion units of glove capacity in a little under two years.”
“But more importantly, they took over that actual raw NBR material market,” he added, explaining that the other glove-producing countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are all “dependent” on China for the materials.
Boyle asked, “So if China wanted to, they could just cut off the supply of these gloves into the country? … Do we have enough gloves to make it a month? Do we have enough gloves to make it a year?”
According to Maier, the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) — the government’s supply of pharmaceuticals and medical products — has about four billion gloves.
“Last I checked, the SNS had about four billion gloves in stock, which is around a ten-day supply,” he revealed.
“Again, we only produce about a billion domestically,” he said, before likening the problem to the American supply chain issues experienced during the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Saying China was wielding rare earth materials as a “supply chain lever” during the pandemic, Maier made the shocking claim that “China, realistically, can shut down our healthcare system in about 45 days.”
While Blue Star NBR’s facility was first announced in October 2021 and began construction in January 2022, it has since faced “funding-related delays,” Virginia Business reported.
“Blue Star anticipated securing a federal loan package from the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC), an agency that President Donald Trump authorized in 2020 to use funds for two years to support domestic companies producing resources needed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the outlet explained.
However, the Biden administration “lagged” in supporting the project, Maier said Saturday.
“The contracts were not managed very well. And you know, the Biden administration really took their eye off the ball,” he said.
When the manufacturing facility is completed, the company will be able to support about ten percent of the nation’s needs, with 15 billion gloves produced annually.
“Because … it’s not a good place to be, being dependent on China for such a critically important item,” Maier argued.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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