Last Updated on July 29, 2020
President Donald Trump today announced his administration has taken a “momentous step toward achieving American pharmaceutical independence,” a focus of the campaign to bring back America’s critical supply chains and medical manufacturing back to the USA, which they have been working on for a long time. Announcement of the deal made shares of Kodak soar to +203.05% and then rise another 63% in after hours trading.
The President stated that “the core of the strategy is to protect our people from the horrible China virus, which should’ve never happened, should’ve never have been here, they should’ve stopped it.”
He continued to state “that in the decades before his term, foreign nations were allowed to freely plunder our factories, and loot our industries, take our business out of the United States. Millions of jobs were vacuumed out – just taken out so easily – our politicians let that happen – and our communities were stripped and shipped – in many cases to China – and all over the world.”
Nearly four years ago President Trump’s administration “launched a bold effort to revitalize American manufacturing, enact fair-trade deals, and bring our industries back home where they belong.”
“When the China virus came to our shores, restoring manufacturing became clearer than ever before, that it is a core matter of National Security,” the President said, “and that we must never on rely foreign nations for America’s medical needs, and many other needs.”
President Trump said they reached an historic agreement with what he called “a great American company from the good old camera age” making a camera gesture at the podium referring to Kodak, which will produce critical pharmaceutical ingredients in Rochester, NY.
The details, which are still being finalized, include a using the National Defense Production Act to give a $765 million loan to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals, which will produce generic pharmaceutical active ingredients and key starting materials for prescriptions to make them cost-competitive.
Kodak, referred to as a great brand by President Trump, didn’t go digital when its competitors did, but when this new agreement is fully operational, it will produce as much as 25% of all active pharmaceutical ingredients to make generic ingredients as well as key starting materials that are the building blocks for many drugs, creating 360 new jobs in its initial phase in Rochester, NY and in Minneapolis, MN.
President Trump also pointed out his administration has approved more generic prescriptions than any other administration by far. Currently, more than 90% of prescriptions written are for generic medications, more than 50% of the necessary ingredients are made in India or China, and less than 10% are made here in the US.
He paused to give thanks to the National Guard for their incredible help in Minneapolis during the recent civil unrest. Peter Navarro, Adam Boehler, Rear Admiral John Polowczyk, to make the deal possible. Noting the administration has created thousands more jobs across pharmaceutical supply chains. Thanks were also given to both members of the administration, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and his reps who are all still in Rochester finalizing the deal.
Congress previously discussed the country’s reliance on China generic prescription drugs in the days leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became clear that much of the country’s supply chain is dependent on China.
