Few domestic industries in the US were as devastated by flooding cheap Chinese imports as manufacturers of facial masks, examination gloves and other disposable medical equipment that protect health workers from infectious pathogens.
Industry collapse had calamitous consequences during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Beijing interrupted exports and American hospital workers turned to the mercy of a deadly-transmitted deadly virus that quickly filled the emergency rooms and the country’s necroterians.
But while President Donald Trump revealed his tariff regime this month and Beijing retaliated with an 84% tax on US imports, the remaining companies that manufacture protection equipment in the United States felt mainly discomfort.
“I’m quite worried,” said Lloyd Armbrust, CEO of Armbrust American, a pandemic startup that produces N95 respiratory masks in a Texas factory. “On the one hand, this is the kind of medicine we need if we really want to become independent of China. On the other hand, this is not a responsible industrial policy.”
The United States has already dominated the field of personal protection equipment, or PPE. The N95 Virus Filters Mask and the disposable nitrilo glove are American inventions, but China now produces over 90% of the medical equipment used by US health workers.
Despite the bipartisan promises to end the country’s dependence on foreign medical products – and support the dozens of domestic manufacturers that emerged during the pandemic – federal agencies have resumed their dependence on cheap Chinese imports.
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Risk remains
Industry experts say the country’s renewed dependence on imported medical products is especially worrying, given a growing outbreak of measles, the threat of avian flu and a trade war with China that some fear that could affect global supply chains.
“It’s the same movie repeatedly,” said Mike Bowen, whose company, Prestige Ameritech, was one of the few household mask manufacturers before the pandemic and who repeatedly warned Congress about the risks of depending on PPE manufactured abroad. Bowen, who retired four years ago, but maintains a participation in Prestige Ameritech, said the rise and fall of the American PPE sector in recent years was entirely predictable. “We didn’t learn anything,” he said.
Shocked by nurses’ images using garbage bags, John Bielamowicz, a business realtor in Texas, opened a N95 factory near Fort Worth with a friend, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on machines that would eventually produce 1.2 million masks per month. “It seemed that it was the right thing to do,” said Bielamowicz, whose company United States Mask was one of more than 100 startups that came up during the first terrifying year of the pandemic.
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Five years later, United States Mask and most other startups disappeared. Companies were harshly hit by the slowdown of demand for PPE as the pandemic retreated and masks became a symbol of excess government and loss of freedom for many Americans.
But the deadly blow seemed to be predetermined: the return of equipment made in China. Only five of the 107 companies created during the pandemic are still manufacturing masks and gloves, according to a membership review created by the American Association of Medical Equipment Manufacturers.
Eric Axel, the association’s executive director, said the tariffs on protective equipment made in China, if they remained high, would give American producers an advantage. “I think this will change the behavior, because people will have to adjust to the reality that you can no longer buy products at prices below the market in China,” he said.
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Optimistic history about how altruistic entrepreneurship has mobilized to face a serious public health emergency should not end.
Political leaders on both sides of the spectrum have never promised to allow the nation to become dependent on medical equipment manufactured abroad, and the Defense Department spent $ 1.3 billion helping American companies to manufacture N95 respiratory masks and nitrile examination gloves in the United States.
In 2021, Congress prepared legislation to ensure that federal agencies prioritized the purchase of internally manufactured medical equipment to support the sector during the inevitable peaks and valleys of demand. He has long been adopted by the Pentagon, who spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year in contracts that support defense -related companies during periods of war and peace.
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But the EPI measure, incorporated into the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Job Investment Law, contained gaps that experts claim to make it ineffective, as federal agencies were looking for exemptions to buy cheaper imports.
When Axel recently traveled at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, he was astonished to find that the masks used at a federal health sorting station were made in China. “Our national security is at risk because once again we put ourselves at the mercy of adversary and non -democratic countries,” he said.
Trump has not mentioned the PPE since returning to office, but during his first term, he often talked about the need to wean the country of medical equipment made abroad as part of his economic policy of “America first.”
“No other president will never inherit empty shelves,” he said in May 2020, speaking of a masks installation at Pennsylvania operated by Owens & Minor. “My goal is to produce everything America needs to ourselves and then export to the world.”
Experts claim that Tarump’s rates imposed on Chinese products during their first term did little to level the playing field, mainly because Beijing’s generous industrial policy helped Chinese companies maintain their price advantage. Trump administration did not respond to comments requests.
Internal manufacture resists
For now, the vast majority of masks bought by chains of hospitals, federal agencies and state governments are imported, mainly from China, and to a lesser extent from Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico – countries that often re -enter products in China to avoid Beijing tariffs for the last two administrations.
Owens & Minor, the health logistics company Trump highlighted during the pandemic, sells masks that are assembled in Mexico. The company refused to discuss its production.
There are some exceptions to the narrative. Safesource Direct, one of the few companies that make nitrile exam gloves in the United States, has survived, largely due to a partnership with the Ochsner Health hospital network, which buys a constant flow of them, according to Justin Hollingsworth, the Safesource Direct CEO.
Ochsner stated that its investment in Safesource aimed to ensure that its hospitals and clinics had a reliable source of medical supplies.
The Armbrust American, the other startup of the still -operating pandemic era, remains for shopping from travelers who do not trust masks made in China and in large quantities by retailer Target. The company said Target executives were willing to pay 50% more for their masks and gloves because they saw a value of high quality product manufactured on American soil.
Like most Americans, Dan Izhaky, a former wholesale distribution executive in New York, was not familiar with the acronym Epi when friends began to complain about reducing masks and examination gloves in hospitals where they worked.
Six months later, United Safety Technology, the company he created to manufacture PPE, gained a $ 96 million federal contract to build a nitrile glove factory around Baltimore.
The company has quickly moved to equip a huge 700,000 -footed machines with machines to produce 200 million gloves per month, but as pandemic supply chain problems have led to growing costs for steel beams, computer chips and transport containers, the company needed another $ 50 million to complete the project.
The federal officers were not impressed, he said. “One or two government-long buying contracts would have taken us to the finish line, but the HHS team was simply no longer interested,” he said, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services.
And when the federal officers turned off the project, the nitrile gloves made in China were becoming abundant again – and costing 1.3 penny by glove, about half of what the company planned to charge. Still, Izhaky said he was cautiously optimistic about Trump’s tariffs. “Things are going in the right direction,” he said on Friday (19). “I just wanted them to be a little less chaotic.”
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
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