Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) sent a letter Tuesday to the chairman of Sichuan Kelun-Biotech Biopharmaceutical, Mr. Liu Gexin, “demanding answers to serious allegations regarding their ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the use of forced labor in their supply chain.”
Mills reminded Liu that U.S. federal law prohibits imports produced by forced labor and that “The U.S. has zero tolerance for these abuses.” The Congressman wrote that such imports “threaten our medical supply chain in American hospitals…and our national security.”
Several MAGA supporters replied with approval of Mills’ letter and suggested that the US “needs to produce our own meds” so “we don’t have to rely on other countries.”
[NOTE: The Atlantic Council reported in 2023 that “despite the increase and the tone of recent rhetoric around the US-China pharmaceutical trade, China does not have a stranglehold on the US medicine supply chain.” China is the fourth largest supplier of medicines to the U.S. after Ireland, Germany and Switzerland. In 2022, the pharmaceutical trade balance between the two countries saw the US “imported $10.2B while exporting $9.3B to China.”]
Yet finished drugs are not the only metric to assess, and the argument about America’s reliance on China for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, imported to make drugs in the U.S., is not new. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wrote in a 2018 letter asking for U.S. inspections of Chinese and other foreign drug production facilities:
“Unbeknownst to many consumers… 80 percent of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients are produced abroad, the majority in China and India; however, the FDA only inspected one in five registered human drug manufacturing facilities abroad last year.”
Rep. Mills’ letter to the chairman of Sichuan Kelun-Biotech requests information from the Chinese company including: ownership information; its relationship with the CCP; “a list of all U.S. customers, including hospitals, healthcare providers, and distributors, that have purchased products from Kelun-Biotech”; and copies of all correspondence the company has had with the Department of Homeland Security.
Mills concluded the letter with a threat: “Failure to provide complete and satisfactory responses to these questions within thirty calendar days will leave Congress little choice but to further scrutinize this matter,” and could include a Congressional hearing and possibly sanctions.