Tariffs Impact on Medicine and Healthcare
By JCA on April 17, 2025
How Will Trump’s Tariffs Impact Medicine and Healthcare?
— It’s a mess of confusion and angst, sources say
Amid all of the confusion and noise about how President Donald Trump’s tariffs will impact medical supplies and patient care — which products, which countries, how much, and for how long — there is one key question.
An underappreciated issue is the possibility that some overseas companies in high tariff countries may shift their manufacturing operations to a plant in a lower tariff country to avoid paying higher fees.
But therein lies a serious concern, said Mark Hendrickson, director of supply chain policy for Premier, one of the nation’s leading group purchasing organizations (GPOs) that negotiates contracts for products it supplies to hospitals and health systems.
Does the FDA workforce have enough inspectors to visit and certify new manufacturing sites to meet requirements or to investigate safety complaints? And how soon can that realistically happen?
“We have seen that some support positions for the inspectors — specifically the folks that book the international travel, get visa applications and other functions — were gutted and the staff was let go,” Hendrickson told MedPage Today. And while it was said that the staff of inspectors whose job it is to visit those plants had not been touched in the move to downsize 3,500 FDA workers, “what we don’t know is how many of those folks [FDA inspectors] took the buyouts.”
“Even if a company wants to shift manufacturing from one line to another line, even if it’s in the same manufacturing plant, you have to have FDA approval,” Hendrickson said. “Getting that inspector in, getting that approved, getting that evaluation, getting all the paperwork and going through the processes that are required by law takes time. You can’t do that in a week, you can’t do that in 6 months.” FDA inspectors would also need to review new plant construction or conversion, should these companies move their operations into the U.S.
In any case, establishing greater production capabilities here, the administration’s stated goal, would take a lot longer.