The United States produces roughly 3% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in the world.Meanwhile, China produces a whopping 45%.
A Johns Hopkins study found that China supplies more than 60% of the essential components American manufacturers need for antibiotics.That’s not just a trade imbalance, it is surrendering sovereignty.The health of our military, our leaders, our children and our neighbors is beholden to an adversary who could weaponize not just the availability of and access to essential medications but the safety of those very products.ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE SHOULD BE BUILT IN AMERICAWe didn’t get here by accident.Decades of offshoring gutted the American industrial base and shipped critical manufacturing jobs overseas.
As recently as 1981, the United States produced 25% of the world’s pharmaceutical ingredients.Today, China controls nearly half the global market.
A nation that cannot make its own antibiotics and cannot stop adversary-sourced chemicals from crossing its border does not fully govern itself.A pharmacy tech looks for a drug on a shelf inside a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on Thursday, Aug.7, 2025.
(George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)The Council on Foreign Relations called this what it is: a pharma choke point.The dependence is structural, deep and spreading from generics into advanced biologics.CORPORATE AMERICA'S CHINA ADDICTION HAS BECOME A NATIONAL SECURITY THREATBeijing has already shown it will weaponize supply chains.
It did so with rare earths, semiconductor inputs and defense-critical metals.Why would we believe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would treat medicine any differently in a crisis when it has the capacity to poison an entire people?The same chemical networks that feed Chinese precursors into American pharmacies also feed the fentanyl pipeline through Mexico.
Research from the University of Virginia’s National Security Data and Policy Institute describes Chinese suppliers and Mexican...