Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) (Thursday) released the following statement regarding President Donald Trump’s executive order encouraging domestic manufacturing of drugs and other medical goods critical to public health.
“The coronavirus pandemic exposed many weaknesses in our medical supply chain. There’s no question that our reliance on certain countries for personal protective equipment, medicine and other goods make containing this deadly disease much tougher. It’s now clear that supply chain diversification and increased domestic manufacturing of medical products is critical to preserving our country’s ability to respond to major public health crises,” Grassley said. “Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic caused health care workers, patients, businesses and all Americans to learn this the hard way. This shouldn’t be a mistake we make twice. These are structural problems exacerbated by years of inaction from previous administrations of both parties. President Trump is right to do all he can to encourage domestic manufacturing. It will be up to Congress to finish the job.”
Grassley has long been an advocate for increased access to affordable prescription drugs and this year authored the bipartisan Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of 2020.
Last week, Grassley led a two-part oversight hearing on protecting the reliability of the U.S. medical supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those hearings can be viewed here and here and Grassley’s statements can be found here and here. In June, Grassley led a hearing on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) foreign drug manufacturing inspection process. His statement from that hearing can be found here.
