Summit on Resilient U.S. Medical Supply Chains

The United States has faced a burgeoning threat of pharmaceutical shortages over the past 15 years, with U.S. public and private sector partners seeking to understand and address the issue. Following the severe medical supply pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. policymakers further awoke to the vulnerability Americans could face in times of global uncertainty, and the potential national security risks of having migrated biomedical production capability for generic pharmaceuticals and in particular essential medicines overseas. Yet returning medical supply chains to the United States cannot occur in a switch-like approach as may be pursued for other critical commodities. As medical supply chains have globalized, many generic producers operate on increasingly thin profit margins, leaving commodities including sterile injectables, vaccines, and other biologics vulnerable to acute shortages and price spikes. There is no ready business model to competitively produce such drugs at scale in the United States, and no comprehensive buffer stock to safeguard access and affordability. With a lack of U.S. facilities capable of resuming production closer to home, efforts to return drug production to the United States would take years to implement. 

Now, the potential for evolving global trade dynamics could present opportunities to address longstanding challenges and strengthen supply chain resilience. Recent proposals to end exemptions and impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and new directives to promote domestic production of essential medicines could yield long-term returns. But without careful and experience-based consideration such measures could unintentionally risk rupturing the fragile global market and result in critical shortages of the medicines Americans rely on. Several potential scenarios could present themselves if timelines are not aligned to allow for a controlled transition to on- or near-shoring a greater share of production capabilities along with the implementation of other policy approaches to protect a stable medical supply chain.

The CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security will host a half day summit on Monday, June 16, 2025, from 2:00 to 5:00pm ET, in partnership with Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen), to examine the current state of U.S. generic medicine supply chains, discuss options to reduce the risk of disruption, and advance a strategy in the near- to medium-term to achieve greater market resilience and stability. What will it take to onshore medical supply chains by 2030 without that transition introducing new vulnerabilities for American patients and consumers? What partnerships will be required to realize such a strategy and what policy solutions are critical to achieve short- and long-term market sustainability?

This event is made possible by the generous support of Cencora.