Medications are stored on shelves at a pharmacy in Los Angeles on May 12, 2025. Eric Thayer/Getty Images
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 13 to enhance American drug supply chain resilience by filling and maintaining the strategic reserve for essential pharmaceutical ingredients, with a preference for American-made ingredients—a move designed to push production away from dependency on China-made ingredients.
“Nearly two-in-five prescription finished drug products are made in the United States, including many of the essential medicines,” the president’s executive order stated. “However, when it comes to Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), the biologically active components of finished drug products, only about 10 percent of the APIs by volume for the finished drug products used in the United States are made here.”
