Off topic – Gobalism is dangerous and not for the usual reasons…

Coronavirus Outbreak Exposes China’s Monopoly on U.S. Drug, Medical Supplies
REBECCA MANSOUR 13 Feb 2020

The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the United States’ dangerous dependence on China for pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to produce drugs in the United States.

The economic repercussions of the coronavirus reveal the dangers of allowing one country to have a near monopoly on global manufacturing, David Dayen explains in an article at the American Prospect:

China is a source of not only finished goods, but also of input parts and raw materials. A substantial number of the materials needed for defense and electronic systems come from China, and that nation is “the single or sole supplier for a number of specialty chemicals,” according to a recent Defense Department report. Rare earth minerals, which are critical to electronics, are largely mined in China. As a result, Chinese disruptions don’t just hit Chinese manufacturing, they hit everyone’s. Automakers have already had to slow or shut down factories globally due to supply shortages.

Perhaps the biggest concern is over medical supplies. China produces and exports a large amount of pharmaceuticals to the U.S., including 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active ingredients used to make drugs here. Penicillin, ibuprofen, and aspirin largely come from China. Last month, the medical supply firm Cardinal Health recalled 2.9 million surgical gowns “cross contaminated” at a plant in China; the blood pressure drug valsartan also saw shortages recently, thanks to tainted active ingredients at one Chinese plant. The combination of supply chain disruptions and increased demand at hospitals if coronavirus spreads to the U.S. could prove devastating.

In a dark irony, most of the world’s face masks—now ubiquitous in China as a precaution—are made in China and Taiwan, and even for those made elsewhere, some component parts are Chinese-sourced. Shortages have led China to declare the masks a “strategic resource,” reserving them for medical workers. U.S. hospitals are “critically low” on respiratory masks, according to medical-supply middlemen. Lack of protective gear could increase vulnerability to the virus, and the one place on earth suffering from production shutdowns is the one place where most of the protective gear originates [emphasis added].

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About 40 percent of generic drugs sold in the U.S. have only a single manufacturer. A significant supply chain disruption could cause shortages for some of many of these products.

Last year, manufacturing of intermediate or finished goods in China, as well as pharmaceutical source material, accounted for
95 percent of U.S. imports of ibuprofen,
91 percent of U.S. imports of hydrocortisone, 70 percent of U.S. imports of acetaminophen,
40 to 45 percent of U.S. imports of penicillin, and
40 percent of U.S. imports of heparin,
according to the Commerce Department.
In total, 80 percent of the U.S. supply of antibiotics are made in China.

While much of the fill finishing work (the actual formulation of finished drug capsules and tablets) is done outside China (and often in India) the starting and intermediate chemicals are often sourced in China. Moreover, the U.S. generic drug industry can no longer produce certain critical medicines such as penicillin and doxycycline without these chemical components.

According to a report from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China’s chemical industry, which accounts for 40 percent of global chemical industry revenue, provides a large number of ingredients for drug products. It’s these source materials — where in many cases China is the exclusive source of the chemical ingredients used for the manufacture of a drug product — that create choke points in the global supply chain for critical medicines.

Moreover, when it comes to starting material for the manufacture of pharmaceutical ingredients, a lot of this production is centered in China’s Hubei Provence, the epicenter of coronavirus. Most drug makers have a one to three-months of inventory of drug ingredients on hand. But these supplies are already being drawn down. Among big [active pharmaceutical ingredient] makers in Wuhan are Wuhan Shiji Pharmaceutical, Chemwerth, Hubei Biocause, Wuhan Calmland Pharmaceuticals. [emphasis added]
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In other words, almost all pharmaceutical roads lead to China.

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More product dumping by China to gain the monopoly –

Rosemary Gibson, senior advisor at the Hastings Center and author of China RX, noted in her testimony before the Commission that the United States is losing its ability to produce generic drugs because Chinese drug companies dumped low-price products into the global market, which in turn pushed U.S., European, and Indian producers out of the generic drug manufacturing business. According to Ms. Gibson, China is seeking to disrupt, dominate, and displace U.S. pharmaceutical and other medical companies, and in doing so limit the United States’ ability to produce its own medicines, including critical antibiotics such as penicillin and even generic aspirin.
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Ironically, China’s success in monopolizing the U.S. drug market with these anti-competitive trade practices was reportedly cited by President Trump’s former economic adviser Gary Cohn as an argument AGAINST Trump’s efforts to fight back against China’s trade violations.

(It’s a just-in-time single source monopoly with all sources leading back to China.)
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“…the tariffs did not hurt the U.S. economy, but the current virus outbreak in China could due to the very problem that the tariffs were enacted, in part, to address. In this sense, the virus has vindicated the Trump’s administration’s tough trade stance and affirmed the necessity of moving the world’s supply chains out of China. If anything, Trump’s tariffs may have actually made the U.S. economy somewhat more resilient because they encouraged companies to begin the process of moving production out of China.”
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Whatever the economic impacts of the coronavirus, the current dependence on an authoritarian communist regime for vital necessities is an indictment of globalist neoliberal economic policies that have endangered U.S. national security and long-term prosperity.
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There is a growing consensus among populists on the right and left about the need to address the neoliberal trade and economic policies that gave China a monopoly on the world’s supply chains.

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Gottlieb, (Scott Gottlieb, a physician and the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner in the Trump administration) urged Congress to empower the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “to look not only at the supply of finished products but to also identify circumstances where key components may have only a single source across an entire category of products.”
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https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/02/13/coronavirus-outbreak-exposes-chinas-monopoly-on-u-s-drug-medical-supplies/

A breakdown in the global supply chain could literally kill people not able to get their medical needs satisfied. Trump is right, we need to bring MORE manufacturing back to the U.S. and end the Chinese monopoly.

Trump must also address the white collar VISA abuse. China uses students on VISAS and OPT experience to steal intellectual capital in the IT industry. China is very dishonest…and yet smart as they canibalize countries by buying up key industries, dump dump products to knock out the competition and become an economic giant where you are dependent on them!

Why use your military take over when you can OWN THEM ECONOMICALLY without the welfare and other headaches – cherry pick what you need and let the country caniblized worry about the poverty and lack of jobs in the country.

Was she Muslim or black?

This so called teacher must be fired and have his licence pulled !