The COVID-19 crisis revealed how reliant the United States has become on imported masks, respirators and other essential medical goods. The latest news is about medicine shortages. 

Decades of bad trade and tax policies have incentivized pharmaceutical corporations to outsource the production of many categories of drugs – and also production of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) that are drugs’ key ingredients. Most APIs come from just two countries, China and India. As workers there have fallen ill and plants have been closed for social distancing, production has dropped. In many categories, there is no domestic production to make up the difference.

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Episode Transcript Here.

Music: Groove Grove by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3831-groove-grove License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/