China is well positioned to fill the biotech innovation gaps in the global economy that the United States leaves behind. America’s “most-favored nation” drug pricing policies will present China with the opportunity to serve the world’s need for innovative medicines if the US continues to isolate itself. With that isolation will eventually come higher domestic prices for the R&D and medicines Americans rely on until the American public demands that we, too, buy our innovative meds from China. Alternatively, the US could continue to work with China to accelerate global R&D while requiring that supply chains ensure against geopolitical disruption through domestic manufacturing of our medical standards of care. Meanwhile, to get other countries to pay their fair share for medicines, the US should rely on trade pressure, not MFN. 

Policies favored by both parties’ leadership – who find it politically easier to battle made-up bogeymen than tackle real issues – threaten to undermine our national health security and eviscerate America’s world-leading innovative drug development industry.

Congress has set its sights on China’s biotechnology industry and the US’s reliance on it. Legislators are worried about the Chinese Communist Party’s access to Americans’ genetic data and US taxpayer funds helping bolster CCP-affiliated companies and are proposing to sever ties between any federally funded work and Chinese “companies of concern,” which include BGI and Wuxi AppTech. 

The U.S. biotechnology sector is an indispensable, strategic national asset. But what if we’re taking it for granted? Recent attempts to weaken IP protections for Covid-19 vaccines and to implement drug price controls threaten future U.S. leadership in biotechnology.