Epoch Times - US depends on China for 95% of the key components of generic drugs: Rosemary Gibson
Aired: 2025-04-11
Duration: 08:15


=== China's Generic Drug Chokehold (07:48) ===

[00:00:00]  The United States depends on China for 95% of the key components that are necessary to make our generic drugs.
[00:00:10]  And if China shut the door on exports within months, our healthcare system would begin to collapse.
[00:00:17]  That's how dependent we are.
[00:00:18]  And it's not just us.
[00:00:20]  The world is dependent.
[00:00:22]  Europe is dependent.
[00:00:24]  Because China has a chokehold And I recall that it's about 91% of the prescribed medicines in the U.S. are actually these generics.
[00:00:45]  So this is massive.
[00:00:46]  It's huge.
[00:00:47]  And whatever hospital you're in, whether it's all the big-name hospitals, what they use are generic drugs.
[00:00:56]  Well, this may be obvious to some of our viewers.
[00:01:01]  Why is this a problem?
[00:01:03]  Well, as China Rx predicted a lot of what happened, that in the event of a natural disaster, global pandemic, or a geopolitical event, the United States will be waiting in line behind other countries to get vital medicines
[00:01:18]  to save people's lives.
[00:01:20]  We have lost our industrial base.
[00:01:23]  And during the pandemic, we had rationing of vital medicines in this country.
[00:01:29]  It wasn't called rationing.
[00:01:31]  That would scare the public.
[00:01:32]  The media didn't call it rationing.
[00:01:34]  The euphemism used in the industry is, well, Dr. So-and-so, we won't be able to deliver those drugs to you today.
[00:01:42]  They're, quote, on allocation, which means they're actually allocating whatever they have in certain...
[00:01:49]  So we were rationing drugs in the United States.
[00:01:53]  And this is because what?
[00:01:57]  Spell it out for me here.
[00:01:58]  This is why.
[00:01:59]  Because we have lost our industrial base to be able to make the medicines, 90% of our medicine supply.
[00:02:06]  We can't make it anymore.
[00:02:07]  We can't make antibiotics anymore in this country from beginning to end.
[00:02:11]  We can't make penicillin.
[00:02:12]  We can't make those antibiotics needed to treat sepsis, which can kill you.
[00:02:18]  We can't make the antibiotics to treat pneumonia, sexually transmitted diseases.
[00:02:22]  We offshore that.
[00:02:25]  And that's a risk of huge, tremendous national security.
[00:02:28]  And if I may say, while we were very focused on treating viral infections, what about bacterial infections?
[00:02:36]  And during the pandemic in the early 1900s, what people died of was not viral infection, but bacterial infections.
[00:02:44]  And they died because we didn't have antibiotics.
[00:02:46]  And if you remember, back in March 2020, China said, well, if the U.S. doesn't do what we want, we could withhold antibiotics from the United States.
[00:02:55]  Think of that.
[00:02:56]  Well, I think, you know, I remember when that happened, and I was thinking about our interview, right, because this was basically the case in point.
[00:03:04]  Absolutely right.
[00:03:05]  We have a system that is perfectly designed for catastrophic failure and significant loss of human life.
[00:03:14]  And that has to change.
[00:03:16]  And it's fixable.
[00:03:18]  This is a man-made
[00:03:18]  You know, it strikes me there's basically two dimensions here of the problem, right?
[00:03:23]  One is, you know, where they're being made.
[00:03:27]  So, you know, we know a lot of them come from India, but we also know that a very significant portion of what's made in India...
[00:03:34]  Those components come from China, so it's really China.
[00:03:37]  China Rx exposed that, and this was a big shock to me.
[00:03:40]  We all think of India, which is a great generic powerhouse, but then you look more deeply, and during a COVID pandemic, the Indian government actually came out and said that we depend, and our generic industry depends on China for 69% of the components it needs for its industry.
[00:04:01]  I can't think of any other You're giving me a 95% number.
[00:04:17]  just explain to me how you got there.
[00:04:19]  Sure, well, first off, we're talking about thousands of different raw materials and chemicals that are used to make our medicines generic and branded drugs.
[00:04:29]  And where I got the 95%
[00:04:32]  figure from is from people who actually make medicines.
[00:04:36]  They are pharmaceutical engineers.
[00:04:38]  They are CEOs of companies.
[00:04:40]  So I'll tell you a quick story.
[00:04:42]  So in February of 2020, when a virus was coming from east to west and going to hit North America, I was having dinner with five extraordinary people who had a combined experience of 150 years in making medicine.
[00:04:59]  So I asked him this question as the entree was being served.
[00:05:02]  I said, so we're going to need generic medicines to take care of very sick people in intensive care units, emergency rooms.
[00:05:11]  What percentage of the components needed to make those medicines are sourced from China?
[00:05:19]  And it was 90%, 95%, 90%, 95%, 95% as we went around the table.
[00:05:27]  So that's One data point from people who have to go source from distributors and they in turn, this is their business, it's what they do.
[00:05:35]  It's like you're a chef and you know where all your ingredients come from and who are the best sources and the country of origin often of where they're made, where they're produced.
[00:05:45]  Another data point is a wonderfully respected leader in Europe who ran a company that supplied actually generics to our military.
[00:05:57]  He said that it's about 98% of our generic drugs depend on some component from China.
[00:06:06]  And another executive from Holland, now retired, he said China owns that raw material market globally.
[00:06:17]  And even the Europeans are concerned that what if they decide to withdraw that?
[00:06:24]  And talking about this first dimension, which is where all of these things coming from China, it's hard to fathom that that could have ever happened.
[00:06:33]  After that threat of withholding during the COVID pandemic, what has changed?
[00:06:39]  Have we been rushing to bring back those supply chains, repatriate them to America and the West, or friend shore, as they call it, perhaps, as well?
[00:06:49]  Overall, I think there's been very little change.
[00:06:52]  Companies have habits of how they purchase, and they want to purchase the cheapest product.
[00:06:59]  And we can talk more about this later and how that system works.
[00:07:03]  But if you have a focus only on cheap and not quality and value, it can really get you into trouble.
[00:07:11]  Here's how the antibiotic market, how we lost that.
[00:07:15]  Our last penicillin fermentation plant.
[00:07:19]  China dumped I think the reason that we're not winning on this yet

=== China's Strategic Advantage (00:27) ===

[00:07:48]  is because China has a strategy.
[00:07:51]  And it knows exactly the pain points of each country and each region.
[00:07:57]  And if they see a move in one direction for an important product, they can say, well, we're going to dump a product, lower the price, and that will deter Western manufacturers from getting back into the game.
[00:08:08]  And we don't have a strategy like that.
[00:08:11]  Let me disqualify this, that the strategy is not just commercial.