Scott Maier, the CEO of Blue Star NBR, a company seeking to develop nitrile medical gloves in the United States, said that the United States’ reliance on China for its medical supply chain has only worsened since the coronavirus pandemic.
Countless articles have been written about the need to have manufacturing be brought back to the United States, especially highlighting high-tech fabrication of semiconductor chips and automobiles. However, Garrett Murch, the president of GCM Strategies, and Maier have said that the American manufacturing of medical equipment is just as necessary.
Medical gloves are just one of the many supply chain vulnerabilities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Maier told Breitbart News in a statement, “Healthcare security, and thus healthcare supply chains, should be foremost in policymakers’ minds. This vulnerability, with nitrile gloves and other critical healthcare supplies, has increased geometrically since the onset of the COVID pandemic. Talk about irony, we went in the exact opposite direction we should have gone, in many cases doubling and tripling our dependence on China, of all nations.”
“As Tucker Carlson has said, we need to make the things we need, and that means safe, quality gloves for our doctors and nurses, our semiconductor factory workers, for our meat processors, for our law enforcement handling fentanyl,” he continued. “That means our critical minerals for advanced weapons and computers.”
“That means oil and gas for so many precursor chemicals we use not only to make gloves, but IVs, syringes, catheters, and, of course, pharmaceuticals. The status quo is existentially unsafe, and there is an urgent need to make these things we need right here at home to keep our people safe through self-reliance,” Maier contended.
This issue has also been of prime importance for many, including Vice President JD Vance.
In February 2024, then-Sen. Vance and other senators sent a letter to former President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra about how the “medical supply chains are as weak today as they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Vance and other senators wrote, “Without swift action by this administration, our nation could find itself once again dependent on our adversaries for essential goods.”
Breitbart News has reported about how the Biden administration had fumbled plans for making medical gloves in the United States, and about how the United States has more than doubled its reliance on imported needles and syringes from China in the last six years.
Murch and Maier wrote a piece for the American Affairs Journal about the need to reshore America’s medical supply chain.
“For the first time in American history, a potentially hostile power can shut down the U.S. health care system. The insufficient U.S. response to this threat endangers the health of millions of Americans and compromises any strategy for countering China,” the two wrote. “Without reshoring our medical supply chain, even major improvements to the defense industrial base would do little to strengthen our position against Chinese coercion.”
They explained America’s dependence on China for nitrile gloves:
The U.S. health care system now relies on Chinese producers for more than 50 percent of our most critical medical supplies—including such essentials as gauze, gowns, needles, syringes, catheters, and, as we know all too well from our own work, nitrile gloves. Before and during the pandemic, the United States already imported nearly 100 percent of these supplies from East Asian producers.3 This geographic dependence proved deadly during the Covid-era global supply chain disruptions.4 Yet, in the years since Covid-19 began, the United States has not only failed to shift its medical supply chain out of East Asia, it has allowed China to become the most crucial link in our supply chain. In a supply crisis affecting these imports from China, our stockpiles would run out in days or weeks. In other words, if China stopped selling gauze, syringes, and nitrile gloves to the United States, our health care system would soon be gravely imperiled if not entirely shut down. [Emphasis added]
While the apparent threat may seem theoretical, Murch and Maier wrote that China recently banned the export of gallium to the United States, making it nearly impossible for American firms to access this critical material.
China said over the weekend it would limit American access to rare earth minerals in retaliation against Trump’s tariffs.
Maier and Murch said that the United States could enact many policies to fix America’s healthcare supply system, including:
- Enforce Buy American Laws, including 25- to 34-percent domestic supply for personal protective equipment (PPE), as set by the Trump administration
- Enact tax code changes to favor domestic producers through fixed capital investment in critical manufacturing, including capital gains tax exemption for critical manufacturing investments, tax-deferred reinvestment, and enhancing loss allocation for investment funds
- Establish development finance
“A sea-change for medical manufacturing seems possible under the second Trump administration. As the administration shows a redoubled commitment to both American manufacturing and Americans’ health, there’s no better place to start than the medical supplies industry,” the two concluded in their piece. “Without a secure supply of our most essential medical needs, the United States cannot protect the lives of its citizens nor credibly defend our interests against Chinese aggression,” they added. “Alternatively, if policymakers take effective steps to reshore the medical manufacturing base, then Americans will reap the benefits of secure supply chains, more jobs, and greater leverage against foreign adversaries.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
