Global Health Catches Cold as Trump Rains Tariffs

US tariffs have disrupted global health supply chains. While we explore triggering emergency multilateral mechanisms, we must cultivate alternative equipment suppliers and pharma markets

- K Srinath Reddy

Twice within this decade, which we are not even halfway through, global health has been undermined by supply chain disruptions. First, it was the Covid pandemic that brought travel and trade restrictions. Now, it is a mercurial US president bombarding the world with trade tariffs. Travel bans did not prevent the SARS Co-V-2 virus and its busy brood of variants from crossing borders, but they limited the flow of personal protective equipment, vaccines, and drugs to countries in need. High-income countries, which imposed restrictions or hoarded resources needed for an effective global response, paid a price when new virus variants emerged in countries with weakened health systems spread worldwide.

Now, Donald Trump's tariffs too will recoil back on the American health system by disrupting supply chains of vaccines, drugs, and medical equipment. They will also have ripple effects on the suppliers from other countries who have long provided these resources to American consumers at lower costs. Even as the rest of the world will redirect trade in these health service supplies to non-US markets, American manufacturing will experience a long delay before domestic capacity can be ramped up to a level that meets domestic needs without reliance on imports.

Currently, many American device manufacturers base their production units in other countries which have lower labor costs. Around 69 percent of the medical devices marketed in the US are manufactured outside that country. It is estimated that the American proposal to impose 60 percent tariffs on all products imported from China will affect prices of 13.6 percent of all medical devices currently sold in the US. China supplies respirators, masks, and gloves needed for America's healthcare facilities. Enteral feeding syringes, which are not manufactured outside of China, will be subjected to a 245 percent tariff in the US.