Biden Calls for Buy American Order for Critical Drugs, More Domestic and Ally Supply of Technology
The White House has not implemented a Buy American order that has been talked about for months (see 2004300046 and 2003110055), and now Joe Biden is proposing some of the same ideas in a white paper on making supply chains more resilient.
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“Biden will require the FDA Commissioner, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Defense to identify critical drugs and medical products and create a market for American manufacturing by directing federal agencies to purchase versions of these drugs that are made in the U.S. and that use U.S.-made source ingredients,” the paper says.
It's not just pharmaceutical supply chains that Biden believes need to be altered. “America needs a stronger, more resilient domestic supply chain in a number of areas, including energy and grid resilience technologies, semiconductors, key electronics and related technologies, telecommunications infrastructure, and key raw materials,” the paper says. “The goal here is not pure self-sufficiency, but broad-based resilience. Biden’s plan will strive to ensure that America doesn’t face a shortage of vital goods -- to deal with any future crisis or fundamental national need -- through a combination of increased domestic production, strategic stockpiles sized to meet our needs, cracking down on anti-competitive practices that threaten supply chains, implementing smart plans to surge capacity in a time of crisis, and working closely with allies.”
Some critics of Buy American say that the private sector is better suited to managing supply chains than the government. The paper says that while there will be ongoing reviews of supply chain vulnerabilities, the government will “work collaboratively with the private sector to improve productivity and avoid unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.”
The paper quotes a report from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on China's industrial policies that said the current U.S.-China trade relationship in medical technology creates “short-term opportunities for American businesses and long-term vulnerabilities for the American public.”
Former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon said in a podcast July 9 that Biden is copying the 2016 Trump campaign with these proposals, and said Biden has “very smart people around him.”