Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro said Thursday that the United States would soon return to manufacturing medicine and medical supplies rather than relying on other nations to supply them.
“Never again should we rely on the rest of the world for our essential medicines and countermeasures,” Navarro, the director of trade and manufacturing policy and national Defense Production Act policy coordinator, said during the White House press briefing.
Recommended Stories
Navarro said that, post-coronavirus crisis, all federal departments, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, should buy medicines, medical supplies, and equipment manufactured in the U.S. so as to be supplied even in the case of a crisis in which those materials are not available by trade.
“One of the things that this crisis has taught us is that we are dangerously overdependent on a global supply chain,” Navarro said. “For our medicines like penicillin, our medical supplies, masks, and our medical equipment like ventilators.”
The Food and Drug Administration, Navarro said, would have to greenlight medical manufacturing so that the U.S. can “leapfrog” other countries, “so we don’t have to compete against cheap sweatshop labor, lax environmental regulations, different tax regimes, and massive subsidies of foreign governments.”
