Last week I wrote that no one in American politics, in either party, deserves blame for failing to anticipate the China Virus outbreak (in the sense of being ready for a genuine pandemic), and especially the Trump administration’s flawed response to its spread within the United States (as opposed to its timely decision on January 31 to start curbing inbound travel from overseas – initially from China).
But there’s one big aspect of coronavirus-related public policy where potentially calamitous and avoidable mistakes have been made, and where identifying responsibility is essential (largely to prevent repetition). That’s the growth of America’s dependence on pharmaceuticals, their active ingredients, and other healthcare-related goods from foreign sources, especially from China.
It should have been obvious long before the virus broke out in Wuhan (at least as far as we know) that health security is national security, and that the blithe approval of trade and related policies that encouraged the offshoring of production in this crucial sector was as dangerous as the offshoring of crucial defense and defense-related (because so many inputs to weapons and platforms aren’t weapons themselves) products. Even louder alarm bells should have sounded once it became clear that a leading offshoring destination was China – a dictatorship that has challenged U.S. national security interests long before the rise of current leader Xi Jinping, and whose role in medical supply chains inevitably created the threat of supply cutoffs (as has recently been threatened in the Chinese government-controlled press).
And indeed American policymakers had all the evidence they needed as early as 2011. That’s when a small office at the Commerce Department called the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a report called – yup – “Reliance on Foreign Sourcing in the Healthcare and Pubic Health (HPH) Sector: Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, and Surgical Equipment.”
For many years, BIS’ Office of Technology Evaluation (OTE) has been issuing reports on sectors of the U.S. defense industry and other portions of the economy critical to the nation’s security and their use of foreign parts, components, materials, and other inputs whose availability shouldn’t be taken for granted. And fortunately, the Office and the various acts of Congress that have defined its mission have long understood that, as suggested above, national security-related industries are by no means restricted to those that turn out products that go bang and boom.
Notably, the study was requested by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which shows commendable foresight. And the main results make jaw-dropping reading today:
>“There is a significant amount of U.S.-based manufacturing for critical healthcare-related commodities.” At the same time, “There is…a very high degree of foreign sourcing and dependency for components, materials, and finished products.”
>“Exposure to supply disruptions is widespread, but many respondents consider it a cost of doing business in the healthcare industry.”
>As a result, “Only 34 percent of respondents are taking steps to reduce their exposure to foreign sourcing and dependency issues.”
>When it comes to the chemical ingredients for drugs, where heavy China dependency has attracted so much attention today, in 2011, pharmaceutical companies reported “difficulty limiting their exposure to foreign dependencies primarily because most of the APIs [active pharmaceutical ingredients] are produced outside the United States.”
>Medical device producers stated that they were “vulnerable primarily due to their reliance on other countries for electronic parts.” Japan was the main concern, due at least in part to the earthquake that year that disrupted many industries’ supply chains. But China has become an even more important supplier since then.
Sadly, however, the record also demonstrates that once the findings came in, no serious follow-through was undertaken.
OTE surveyed 161 companies – 70 pharmaceutical producers, 75 manufacturers of medical devices and surgical equipment, and 16 companies that turned out both kinds of products. Roughly three fourths of these companies were headquartered in the United States and roughly one-fourth were foreign owned.
All told, these firms produced 868 individual pharmaceuticals and 833 kinds of medical devices or surgical equipment. Of these, in turn, 290 pharmaceuticals and 128 types of devices and equipment were deemed by OTE “critical to effective healthcare services in the United States,” meaning “needed in various emergency scenarios.” The bureau also looked into the chemical ingredients and parts and components comprising these products.
As for the specific information sought, here it is:
“Survey respondents were asked to identify the pharmaceuticals and medical devices/surgical equipment they manufactured, integrated/assembled, and/or sold for use in the United States. For each product area selected, companies were then asked to provide the top three company proprietary products they make and the location of manufacture. Finally, companies identified, to the best of their knowledge, whether they were the sole U.S.-based manufacturer, sole global manufacturer, or not the sole manufacturer of each product.”
Some of the above results in greater detail:
More than 73 percent of the total surveyed companies depended on suppliers located abroad for at least one critical component, manufacturing material, or actual finished good. And the average number of such foreign-sourced goods per company surveyed was 11.4. Seventy-nine percent of pharmaceutical firms surveyed reported themselves in this situation versus 63.7 percent of the device and equipment manufacturers, and the average number of foreign-sourced products was 11.4 for the drug companies versus 9.8 for their device and equipment manufacturers.
Interestingly, even at this point, China loomed pretty large large in the picture at that time – especially for medical devices and surgical equipment. Its entities represented 13.8 percent of the total number of foreign suppliers to U.S.-based producers. For pharmaceutical companies, they accounted for 9.1 percent – less than leader Italy (15.7 percent), India (12.8 percent), and Germany (10.6 percent). Not that this result should be especially comforting, as India – a major global producer of generic drugs – has recently announced to restrict exports because it’s experiencing difficulty getting chemicals from China and (surprise?) wants to make sure it can provide for its own population.
The OTE survey, in other words, found that, in 2011, healthcare products companies operating in the United States relied on a diverse global supply chain. But significant vulnerabilities were reported, too. Principally, for pharmaceuticals, “there was no U.S.-based source for at least 65.5 percent of [total goods] identified by survey respondents.” And for medical devices and surgical equipment, the figure was at least 60.5 percent. More troublingly, in the device and equipment sectors, the greatest dependencies tended to be in complex products.
Moreover, when thinking about the safety of imported healthcare goods, keep in mind BIS’ finding that only 60.3 percent of the companies in total could identify the suppliers of their suppliers.
Nor were significant supply disruptions unknown by healthcare products companies. Thirty percent of these businesses reported experiencing at least one of these events between 2007 and 2010, 40 percent of these came from foreign suppliers, and 17.5 percent came from China – the biggest share for any single country. Both domestic- and foreign-origin disruptions lasted an average of 155 days. Nonetheless, these figures are surely way too low, as only 18.3 percent of responding companies said they tracked foreign supply disruptions.
Even so, the study oddly found that “Only 16.6 percent of companies foresee a risk of supply disruptions from outside of the United States” but that 29 percent “believed their company was vulnerable to serious and/or prolonged supply chain disruptions from events or dependencies outside the United States.” For pharmaceuticals, the top concern again was lack of API availability domestically.”
OTE made several policy recommendations to strengthen America’s health security. For example, various major relevant federal agencies should “further examine [the] survey data to prioritize the foreign sourcing and dependencies that could have the greatest impact on the healthcare supply chain in an emergency situation.”
In addition, these agencies, “in coordination with DHS and the Department of Commerce, should assess whether the use of Defense Production Act authorities, such as the Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS), could provide the ability to rapidly expand or surge capacity of U.S.-based pharmaceutical and medical device/surgical equipment facilities to meet demand in an emergency situation.” As made clear, however, by the continued sky-high levels of the healthcare industry’s China and other foreign dependencies, the problem was promptly ignored.
Such measures, along with many others in the trade, tax, and regulatory fields will no doubt be crucial to rebuilding the kind of domestic healthcare industry so many Americans and even their leaders finally recognize is essential. But if the nation really is seriously behind the idea that health security is national security, it’s going to need updated detailed information on foreign dependencies. In other words, time to put the OTE to work again.
