Coronavirus Exposes Insanity of Reliance on China

As the coronavirus continues to rage, it has become all the more evident that the United States' reliance on foreign trade, particularly with regard to China and particularly with regards to medical supplies is absurd and indefensible. As the FDA reports,

FDA data show that there is a total of 1,079 API facilities worldwide that make the 370 drugs on the WHO list that are marketed in the U.S.  Of these, 166 (15%) are in China, 221 (21%) are in the United States, and 687 (64%) are in the rest of the world. ​

API stands for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient; namely the ingredients in the drugs so many Americans are reliant (often over-reliant) on.

But it gets worse.

...About 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used to make drugs in the United States are said to come from China and other countries like India. For example, the chemical starting material used to make doxycycline, the recommended treatment for anthrax exposure, comes from China. 

And now, China has threatened to cut the United States off from this essential trade,

In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into "the mighty sea of coronavirus."

This from the country that unleashed this virus (possibly accidentally from a biolab) and most other outbreaks it seems (i.e. SARS and Bird Flu). How we could ever have allowed our country to become so reliant on trade from such an unreliable partner is unbelievable. Those who allowed it to happen need to pay a price too.