U.S. Trade Probes: China May Face New Tariffs

0:00Welcome back to China Infocus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. The U.S. relies heavily on China for generic drug ingredients and lawmakers say that's a growing national security concern. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Aging, how they're hearing to discuss the risks and possible solutions. Entity's Crispop has the latest from Washington. What if I told you that Communist China and adversary of the United States has so controlled other building blocks and made the medicine seniors Americans rely on? Lawmakers on the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing Wednesday examining America's dependence on foreign drug manufacturing. China's regime believes it's at war with us. China to win this war has a doctrine of unrestricted warfare. A hundred of America's most U-pharmaceuticals, they require ingredients that are made in only one Chinese factory. Experts say even drugs produced outside China often rely on Chinese ingredients. India, the other heavyweight production center for generics, they get 80% of their active pharmaceutical

1:06ingredients from China. The United States has become reliant on China and India for key ingredients to manufacture generic drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and key starting materials. Congress must empower the FDA to conduct rigorous oversight to make sure foreign manufacturers comply with our safety standards. Witnesses told senators, US drug companies have been gradually pushed out of the market. China enticed US manufacturers to their shores. Drugmakers soon realized they were subject to Chinese rules, laws, patent agreements. They were required to have Chinese Communist Party members on their boards and relinquish up to 51% of their companies to state owned enterprises. Corporations must give up their drug formula for approval. If not surrendered freely, they're stolen. Chinese companies then spring up, creating the exact same drug and selling it below cost. Committee Chairman Senator Rick Scott is pushing legislation aimed at increasing transparency

2:08about where medicines are made. In an exclusive interview with me last year, he explained, when you put a generic drug in your body, you don't know what's in it. 80% of the generic drugs that you put in your body come from India and China. 90% of the ingredients come from China. On the label, it should say, where are the ingredients from and where was it manufactured? He said our supply chain is vulnerable during a geopolitical crisis. No, if we go to war, which is not just one to go to war, but the country that we'll go to war with is the same country we're dependent on China, which is foolish. Witnesses also discussed economic tools that could help rebuild U.S. production. Can we use tariffs to help us out with China? Section 232 tariffs, I think, are very important in that regard. And if the president were to invoke the Defense Production Act, these are things that could stimulate domestic production immediately. But we don't have time to play around with this. This is imperative that we get this done within the next year and half two years, period. Senator Scott and colleagues have introduced the Bipartisan Clear Labels Act,

3:11which would require drug labels to disclose where ingredients and finished products are made, and give patients more transparency about what they're taking. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Chris Bob and Didi News. The U.S. led strikes on Iran and the death of the Iranian leader have rattled Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party worries that a chain reaction could threaten the regime's own stability. That's according to a new report from the Epic Times, setting sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. China hasn't said much about the Iran strike, so aside from messaging similar to what we saw last summer after the 12-day war. But reports note that internally, it's a different story. Several sources told the Epic Times that top Chinese officials have been holding multiple secret meetings, even drawing lessons from the Soviet Union's collapse. We spoke with Nason Tsui, investigative reporter at the Epic Times, and Bart Markoy's foreign policy analyst and former career diplomat. Nason, starting with you, your thoughts on the CCP's reaction to the war, and its internal push to even draw lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union?

4:15Oh, thank you for having me. For years, the Chinese Communist regime has spent tremendous time and money to learn how to do all these things. Excuse me. How all these major regime collapse after the fall of Burling War in 1989? The Chinese Communist regime tries to make a lot of effort to study how and what happened in Soviet Union, and the purpose, of course, is to prevent the similar situation happen in the future, so that it will collapse the Communist regime in China. Now, if you look at the Communist regime and Iranian regime, there are a lot of similarities, because in Iran, under the Iranian regime, in every part of the government and military operation, they have a religious element over there to oversee and to control the operation. While in China, it's similar in the military, from the company level up in the society,

5:16from the community level up, every level, there is a communist official that's there to control, but pretty much control the entire operation. So, if we can finally collapse the whole Iranian regime, that's going to means a lot how we go into deal with China in the future to focus, really to focus on the Communist Party officials and their military officials. And Bart digging into China, the regime is reportedly censoring searches on regime change, online as concerns of an uprising spread among the party. How powerful can real change be, like what we're seeing in Iran, enough to spark a movement elsewhere? Well, absolutely, you know that every Chinese patriot sees the situation in Iran the same way that Mr. Tsui just described it. They're looking at it, they see the similarities between the religious

6:20police and the party commissars, and they see the absolute control, and they are looking to see whether they could, they being the Chinese citizens are looking to see whether this is the time. I think that they probably are going to be very cautious before they do that, but you know that they're looking at it, and you know that they too are learning lessons from what they see. And Nathan, one source told the Epic Times, the CCP views the killing of Iran's Aleh Hamaneh as one of the most significant geopolitical upheavals of the past two decades. Do you see it that way? Yeah, of course, if you look at this newly rise, your nation continental power, you know, this newly, this new continental power have several strongholds around outside boundary that's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. However, you know inside of these outside

7:22boundaries, those countries, their influence and control by China and Russia, they are much weaker than what I'm talking about Afghanistan, and also I'm talking about the other five-stand countries in Asia. I'm talking about that, the Uzbekistan, Hassakhistan, Tajikistan, all these countries are much weaker. Now, if if the Iranian regime collapsed, then that pretty much means the western corner and western and southern corner of these continental power, total collapse, and then the weaker part of these continental power will be exposed directly to the outside influence. And those weaker countries are much harder for China and Russia to control. And for ahead of the strikes, many Chinese media and mouthpieces said that the US didn't have the backbone to strike Iran, given that China miscalculated President Trump's capabilities.

8:23More broadly, does this hurt China's image in the eyes of its partners? Oh, everything that has happened in the past year has hurt China's image in the eyes of its partners. It's, first of all, it's hard to where it has been shown to be complete junk. It's useless against American air power, and it's useless against American special operations capabilities. The not just the air power, the much-vonted hypersonic anti-ship missiles, I've seen a report that China sent 50 of them to Iran. All 50 of them failed to reach their target. They all missed and the vessels that fired them were all sunk. They have been shown to be an unreliable weak partner. I think we spoke recently about the fact that Iran was turning to China asking it for assistance, and all that got from China was a gentle clap and some words of encouragement, but nothing

9:28that really matters. And on that note, Bart, what does all of this mean for Taiwan? Some headlines highlight how this could be a blow to U.S. munitions stockpiles that could damage the deterrence against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Others believe that the strengthens America's hand as China now knows that the U.S. is serious about striking back your thoughts on that. Let me first repeat what I said earlier. There is no weapon, no munition that is as important as the willpower of the leadership, and nobody doubts the willpower of President Trump or his administration or of the American military. As far as the munition supplies are concerned, we have the supplies, we have the supplies available, we have the manufacturing capability available to replace them. President Trump has been working on that since his second inauguration. He's been working feverishly on it. He's been working to replace the rare earth minerals and the other precursors to gunpowder and high explosive manufacturing that we traditionally, not

10:34traditionally, but for the past 20 years have been getting from China. He's already moved to replace that from other countries, from other allies. And I just, I remember reading about two months ago that the Pentagon had a $500 billion surplus in their budget that was not obligated. The money is there, and when you have that kind of money, you can buy what you need to manufacture. What's necessary. That's all for today's China Infocus. Tiffany Meyer, if you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see as cover, send us an email at chinainfocusantidi.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on the clock, original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com or download our NDD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.