WASHINGTON, D.C. – In case you missed it, Senator Rick Scott as chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, released an investigative report titled “Protecting Seniors’ Access to Essential Medications: Securing the Foreign Generic Pharmaceutical Supply Chain.” The report is aimed at America’s severely dangerous overreliance on foreign-made generic drugs, which are vastly imported from Communist China and India.

This comes after Senator Scott held a hearing exposing the direct national security and public health threats caused by this horrific overdependence on foreign-made generic drugs and their ingredients. In a second hearing, the Aging Committee again heard from expert witnesses who discussed recommendations to secure America’s pharmaceutical supply chains and ensure access to high-quality, life-saving generic drugs that millions of Americans – including those in our aging community – rely on. More recently, the senator also wrote an op-ed for The Hill, discussing the threat in detail.

Senator Rick Scott said, “The United States’ overreliance on foreign-made generic drugs, especially those made in adversarial nations, is a very real threat to all Americans, but especially our aging population. Not only have we had many recorded cases of these imported, generic drugs being contaminated and causing death and injury, if Communist China, our adversary, or India shut off the flow of these essential drugs, the U.S. would only have months of prescription drug supply, forcing us to begin rationing drugs and turning away all but the most in need within a matter of weeks! Our seniors deserve better, and this report is just the beginning as we expose this national security and public health crisis and how to fix it by increasing Food and Drug Administration oversight and bringing generic drug production back to America. Congress has to work with the Trump administration and act now to make sure that Americans have safe and high-quality drugs and to secure the prescription drug supply chain.” 

Highlights of the report include:

• The U.S. manufactured 37% of its consumed pharmaceuticals in 2024, a stark decline from 2002 when that figure was at 83%.
• China accounts for 95% of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 70% of U.S. imports of acetaminophen, and upwards of 45% of U.S. imports of penicillin.
• Approximately 90% of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) for global antibiotics are of Chinese origin, and 83% of the top 100 generic drugs consumed by U.S. citizens have no U.S.-based source of APIs.
• While India supplies approximately 50% of all generic drugs used in the U.S., Indian manufacturers rely heavily on China for approximately 80% of the API that they use.
• According to a 2025 study, the occurrence of serious adverse events for generic drugs manufactured in India was 54% higher than for equivalent drugs that were manufactured in the United States. Adverse events were hospitalization, disability, and death.

The report also recommends the following solutions:

• Establish a federal buyer’s market for essential medicines, prioritizing American made products first, and prioritizing near- and friend-shoring if American made products are not available;
• Map our generic drug supply chains;
• Require companies to disclose country of origin for finished pharmaceuticals;
• Utilize trade levers like the administration’s 232 investigation authority;
• Pass clarifying language to close loopholes that allow foreign-made products to be categorized as ‘Made in America;’ and
• Support U.S. biotechnology

Read the full report HERE or by clicking the image below.

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