Few domestic industries have been devastated by the flood of low -cost Chinese imports such as face masks producers, exam gloves and other US medical tools that protect health workers from infectious pathogens.
The disappearance of the industry had calamitous consequences during the Covidic Pandemic, when Beijing stopped the exports and workers of the American hospital they found themselves at the mercy of a deadly air virus that quickly filled the emergency room and the emergency golds of the nation.
But while President Trump revealed his tariff regime at the beginning of this month and Beijing reacted with a tax of 84 % on American imports, the few remaining companies that make protective equipment in the United States seemed mostly uncomfortable.
“I was quite crazy,” said Lloyd Armanbrust, CEO of Armanbrust American, a startup of the pandemic era that produces N95 respiratory masks in a Texas factory. “On the one hand, this is the type of medicine we need if we become truly independent of China. On the other hand, this is not a responsible industrial policy.”
Once the United States dominated the field of individual protective equipment, or the N95 mask that filters virus and the US nitrile glove are American inventions, but China now produces over 90 percent of medical tools worn by American healthcare professionals.
Despite the bipartisan votes to put an end to the dependence of the nation on foreign medical products and to support the dozens of national producers who were born during the pandemic – the federal agencies resumed their dependence on economic chinese imports. The experts in the sector affirm that the renewed dependence of the country on imported medical products is in particular as regards an expanding epidemic of measles, the threat of avian influence and a commercial war with China that some concerns could influence global supply chains.
“It is the same film again and again,” said Mike Bowen, whose company, Prestige Amme, was one of the few manufacturers of domestic masks in front of the pandemic and which repeatedly warned the congress on the risks of relying on PPE of foreign origin
Bowen, who retired four years ago, but maintains a participation in Prestige Amatech, said that the rise and fall of the American PPE sector in recent years have been completely predictable. “We didn't learn anything,” he said.
Shocked by the images of the nurses who wear bags for the garbage, John Bielamowicz, a commercial real estate broker in Texas, opened an N95 factory near Fort Worth with a friend, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in machinery that in the end would have churned out 1.2 million masks per month.
“It seemed the right thing to do,” said Bielamowicz, whose company, the mask of the United States, was one of the over 100 start-ups that were born during the first terrifying year of the pandemic.
Five years later, the United States mask and most of the other start-ups have disappeared. The companies were affected hard by slowing down the demand for PPE while the pandemic retired and when the masks became a symbol of the overcoming of the government and the loss of freedom for many Americans. But the fatal blow was apparently preordained: the return of Chinese manufacturing equipment.
Only five of the 107 companies created during the pandemic are still creating masks and gloves, according to a review of the list of members created by the American Medical Manufacturers Association.
Eric Axel, executive director of the association, said that the rates for protective tools made in Chinese, if they remained high, would give American producers an advantage. “I think it will change the behavior, because people will have to adapt to reality that you can no longer buy prices below the market from China,” he said.
But other managers in the sector fear that the growing retaliation moves by the United States and China could lead to interruptions of the supply chain and the return of the deficiency of PPE. Many argue that the economic uncertainty caused by the launch of the rates of Mr. Trump will relax new investments.
“It is difficult to make corporate decisions when policies change every four years and now every couple of days,” said Scott McGurl, an expert in the health sector at the Grant Thornton consultancy company.
Given the ability of Chinese producers, with the support of their government, to evade commercial restrictions, many managers are not convinced that the rates will have a lasting impact. What is needed, they say, are legislative and political mandates that push government agencies and hospital networks to buy masks and American manufacturing gloves.
“Even with a 100 %rate, the Chinese mask that sells for a penny will be even cheaper than that of American manufacture that sells for eight cents,” said Armanbrust.
The story of silver on how altruistic entrepreneurship gathered to satisfy a serious emergency for public health should not have ended in this way.
The political leaders of both parties of the corridor had promised to never again to allow the nation to rely on foreign manufacture medical equipment and the defense department spent $ 1.3 billion to help American companies to make N95 respiratory masks and nitrile exam gloves in the United States.
In 2021, Congress drafted the legislation to ensure that federal agencies gave priority to the purchase of medical equipment made at national level to support the sector through the inevitable peaks and depression of the application.
It is a model long embraced by the Pentagon, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year in contracts that support defense companies during periods of war and peace.
But the DPI measure, bent in the investment of infrastructure and in the work law of 2021, contained escapades that experts claim that they made it ineffective since federal agencies sought exemptions to buy less expensive imports.
When Mr. Axel of the Medical Manufacture's Association recently traveled through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, he was amazed to find that the masks used in a Federal Health screening station were made in China.
“Our national security is at risk because we put ourselves again at the mercy of the contradictory and non -democratic countries,” he said.
Trump has not mentioned the individual protection equipment since he returned to the office, but during his first term he often spoke of the need to wean the country out of the foreign manufacture medical equipment as part of his economic policy “America First”.
“Never again another president will inherit the empty shelves,” he said in May 2020, speaking in a Pennsylvania mask structure managed by Owens & Minor. “My goal is to produce everything that America needs ourselves and then export to the world.”
Experts say that the rates that Trump has imposed on Chinese goods during his first term made very little to level the playing field, above all because Beijing's generous industrial policy helped Chinese companies to maintain their price advantage.
The Trump administration did not respond to the commentary requests.
For now, the vast majority of masks purchased by hospital chains, federal agencies and state governments are imported, mainly by China and, to a lesser extent, by Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico-Paesi which often reconfect the Chinese manufacture products to avoid the tariffs that have been imposed in Beijing by the last two administrations.
Owens & Minor, the health logistics company that Trump has chosen praise during the pandemic, sells masks that are assembled in Mexico. The company refused to discuss its production.
There are some exceptions to narration. Safesource Direct, one of the few companies that produces nitrile exam gloves in the United States, has survived, largely due to a partnership with the Ochsner Health hospital, which acquires a constant flow, according to Justin Hollingsworth, CEO of Safesource Direct. Ochsner said that his investments in Safesource are intended to ensure that his hospitals and clinics have a reliable source of medical supplies.
Armanbrust American, the other startup of the pandemic era still in business, succeeds in purchases from travelers who do not trust Chinese manufacture masks and the bulk purchases by the dealer's lens. Armanbrust said that target managers were willing to pay 50 % more for his masks and gloves because they saw the value in having a high quality product on US soil.
Like most Americans, Dan Izhaky, a former wholesale distribution in New York, was not familiar with the acronym DPI when friends started complaining about the stocks of masks and exam gloves in the hospitals they worked in.
Six months later, United Safety Technology, the company he created to create PPE, won a federal contract of $ 96 million to build a nitrile gloves factory outside Baltimore.
The company quickly moved to combine a huge warehouse of 700,000 square feet with machinery to produce 200 million gloves per month, but since the problems of the pandemic supply chain related to spiral costs for steel beams, computers and shipping features, the company needed other $ 50 million to finish the project.
Federal officials had gone mad, he said.
“One or two long -term government purchase contracts would have brought us to the finish line, but the HHS team was no longer interested,” he said, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services.
And when federal officials pulled the plug, the Chinese manufacturing nitrile gloves were becoming abundant again-and loading 1.3 cents in glove, about half of what the company was planning to accuse.
However, Mr. Izhaky said the rates of Mr. Trump was cautiously optimistic. “Things are happening on the right trajectory,” he said on Friday. “I just wish they were a little less chaotic.”