GOP Congressman Announces the 'Beat China Act'
A Republican congressman from Texas has proposed legislation that would provide the impetus to wrest manufacturing of critical medicines needed by Americans out of the control of China.
“This is something that I think a lot of the American people are starting to recognize that is a problem we need to address going forward,” Rep. Chip Roy said Wednesday morning during an interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
“China, I think something like 97 percent of our antibiotics come either directly from China or have significant materials that are coming through China,” he said. “But, it’s not just China by the way, right? India — I think 40 percent of our generics come from India. And this is something we need to deal with.
“We have got a piece of legislation we are introducing — I think this week — we’re calling the ‘Beat China Act,’ but it will help us with all countries maintaining our ability to produce drugs here in the United States or at least in our territories and protectorates.”
Last month, a state-run Chinese media outlet said China had the power to plunge the United States “into a mighty sea of coronavirus,” Fox News reported
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said last month that China has “a tremendous amount of leverage.”
“They can threaten to cut us off from our pharmaceutical supplies, they could trigger a domestic problem here that would make it difficult or us to confront them,” Rubio told Fox News.
Roy said his legislation aims to address that through the tax code, to remedy a change that negatively affected pharmaceutical production in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.
“We have got legislation that would just simply fix that tax code so that you are treated equally in Puerto Rico as you are even in the domestic and continental United States,” he said. “And if we do that, we can bring back a lot of the pharmaceutical manufacturing that left Puerto Rico … and went offshore to China.”
The congressman noted that he is not alone. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin are also trying to revive America’s pharmaceutical sector.
“I think we need to do a lot of different things,” Roy said. “But what I’m trying to do is find ways to incentivize and encourage manufacturers to make these drugs here in the United States or in our territories where sometimes the price of manufacturing is a lot less than it is in the continental United States.
“We need to do it because these drugs are imperative for our national security and the well-being of our citizens.”
In a news release on his website, Roy said in a statement, “If the Chinese wanted to put us in a serious bind, they could withhold these lifesaving drugs from the United States, as their own government-run newspapers have already suggested. …
“There is much to do to ensure we are taking necessary actions to support proper public health and economic responses during the coronavirus pandemic, but we also need to look ahead to fixing some of the most concerning issues facing our country that have only been highlighted by the recent crisis. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to debate solutions to bringing the medical supply chain back to the U.S.”
China’s control of the U.S. pharmaceutical trade was decried by Rosemary Gibson of the Hastings Center last year during testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“National health security and national security are threatened by U.S. dependence on China for thousands of ingredients and raw materials to make our medicines. China’s aim is to become the pharmacy to the world, and it is on track to achieve it. China’s dominance is global,” said Gibson, co-author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.”
She said then that China has already shown it can flex its muscles when it chooses.
“As China gains more control over America’s supply of medicines, it could charge American consumers and patients higher prices, or extort concessions from the federal government to keep prices affordable,” Gibson said. “This is not mere speculation. China’s domestic companies formed a vitamin C cartel in the early 2000s and increased prices up to 600 percent, which increased the cost to American consumers and businesses.”
She added, “The nation’s health security is in jeopardy. The U.S. can no longer make penicillin. The last U.S. penicillin fermentation plant closed in 2004.”
Gibson called the situation a national security risk.
“Medicines in the hands of an adversary can be weaponized. Supplies can be withheld. Medicines can be made with lethal contaminants or sold without any real medicine in them, rendering them ineffective,” she testified.
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