Rethink Trade

Rethink Trade fights to ensure that future trade deals prioritize human need over corporate greed | Director: @WallachLori | Research Director: @DanielRangelJ

[Rethink Trade @RethinkTrade]

Press Release: U.S. Trade Deficit Up, Manufacturing Jobs Down, Other Manufacturing Growth Measures Mixed in First Nine Months of 2025

📌 https://t.co/XqFd3VKjTJ

[Rush Doshi @RushDoshi]

Any left China policy that claims to care about labor must acknowledge this fact or else it may as well be libertarian.

[Rush Doshi @RushDoshi]

🚨Thrilled to share our new @CFR_China report with CFR Global Health's @TomBollyky, @Prof_Yadav_SCM, @OliviaWKosloff, & Elena Every: "The Pharma Choke Point."

The US is dependent on Chinese production for essential medicines, creating a "rare earths" problem in this sector. Seven hundred medicines approved for use in the United States depend on at least one chemical produced solely in China.

For the last year, our study group of pharma and biotech specialists, China scholars, and industrial policy experts came together to:

1⃣ Use commercial data to map the dependencies
2⃣ Devise a typology of three unique "archetypes" of these dependencies
3⃣ Craft solutions to address these dependencies

A few key points follow below:

➡️China's Leverage is real — Beijing doesn't need a wartime crisis to exploit it. It can slow shipments, delay licenses, or reroute flows through "peacetime weaponization." That's the playbook it has already run on rare earths.

➡️Current dependence is structural — It's the product of decades of Chinese state investment and Western pursuit of the low-cost solution. China controls the raw/starting materials for 94% of US amoxicillin, 74% of heparin, and 70% of acetaminophen. It's dominating preclinical work in biotech. And diversifying downstream offers no real protection from upstream dependence.

➡️Archetype 1: Upstream Dependence — Roughly 700 medicines Americans depend on at least one chemical made only in China, including antibiotics, blood thinners, ER drugs. Solutions include:

- building a strategic reserve of critical medicines
- building "allied scale" to create diversified production
- mix various long-term supply and demand interventions to change economic viability for KSMs, APIs, and other upstream inputs (more in the report)

➡️Archetype 2: Competitive Displacement of U.S. Biomanufacturing and Clinical Trial Capacity — For innovative biologics—medicines made from living cells—such as monoclonal antibodies, the risk is not a single upstream choke point but competitive displacement across every stage of the value chain: discovery, clinical development, contract manufacturing, and market access. The U.S. is losing a critical capability: now, WuXi alone handles nearly half of US clients' development programs. China alone is more than half of all late-stage monoclonal antibody programs. Lock-in deepens at every stage. Solutions include:

- accelerating first-in-human clinical trials in the United States
- funding and incentivizing the adoption of advanced biologics manufacturing technologies (e.g., low-cost capital from the USG)
- building contract research alternatives in allied countries like South Korea
- bolstering the U.S. biomanufacturing workforce
- creating a system to secure artificial intelligence (AI)–ready biodata and digital chemistry, manufacturing, and controls.

➡️Archetype 3: Dependence on PRC Infrastructure — Here, the vulnerability is not disruption in the supply of an existing product, but Chinese control over the research-and-development (R&D) infrastructure underlying future pharmaceutical innovation. Growing reliance on China for DNA synthesis is just one example. Solutions include:

- improving DNA supply chain security
- enhancing transparency and disclosing provenance
- increasing federal investment in next-generation DNA synthesis technologies
- and bolstering allied cooperation on standard-setting and procurement to encourage the adoption of these technologies.

➡️Key Takeaway: China has both the tools and demonstrated willingness to weaponize U.S. pharmaceutical dependence: the structural conditions enabling it run through nearly every tier of the pharmaceutical supply. The question is not whether to act, but if the United States will manage to do so before a crisis makes the cost of decades of inaction unavoidable.

I am so grateful to Tom, Prashant, Elena, Olivia, Chloe, Ben, Aarya, CFR's publications team, and so many others who made this possible. It was tremendously educational to work together on this project.

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Chicagoland friends - check out this great lineup! We r screwed on jobs, economic security, climate - even natl resilience and security - if we do not build support for new trade arrangements that work for most of us.

Looks like a good event to get on that important path!

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Carney equally genius on trade: His proposal for a future Int’l trade regime is to replace the WTO with all nations joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Yup, the TPP - if WTO & NAFTA had a baby raised on steroids…

Everything bad from WTO + ISDS + Big Tech digital trade 🤮🤬

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

USTR Greer: “It is time for the economics profession to take a cue from Keynes and catch up with the world as it is, rather than how we may wish it to be.”

Read @USTradeRep @jamiesongreer piece on why we need balanced trade.

https://t.co/FahEZw87Q3

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

If @USTradeRep @jamiesongreer can approvingly quote John Maynard Keynes on trade policy approaches, I can heartily recommend everyone read USTR Greer’s essay in the IMF journal on balanced trade and tariffs 😉

Seriously, read it.

I agree with much of this excellent piece🧵

[Rethink Trade @RethinkTrade]

“Most Americans want that future and the trade policy Rep DeLauro describes gets us there.”

Check this official House website to see if your House member has sponsored the bill yet, and if not ask them to! https://t.co/pgfwpWrjlr /End

[Rethink Trade @RethinkTrade]

Great bill on a new US trade policy to help working people, main street businesses and consumers just introduced. @RethinkTrade Director @WallachLori at the presser supporting Rep. DeLauro's Fair Trade for Working Families proposal.🧵1/

[Rethink Trade @RethinkTrade]

“Rep. DeLauro’s Fair Trade for Working Families Resolution paves a different way forward on trade from the failed neoliberalism and Trump tariff chaos.” Read the text of Rep. DeLauro’s resolution here: https://t.co/EHpC82WT4Y 4/

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

That this would bigly worsen the US trade deficit, screwing a major Trump promise, maybe got by Sec. Missingbrain Mullin? (Also it’s likely illegal to limit flights to NYC, LA etc)

Tourism is a big part of the US services trade surplus & balances out our big goods trade deficit.

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Coupang sells almost only in Korea. Runs there via Korean incorporation. But is on US stock markets under a linked US corp. that big US hedge funds invested in.

The ploy: claim Coupang is a 🇺🇸 firm & 🇰🇷 govt oversight after a data breach is anti-American.
https://t.co/ZnXRhsl2Iz

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Instead of targeting Korean auto import floods & mercantilist trade policy fueling a big trade deficit w/ 🇰🇷 & unfair shipbuilding policies…

Trump prioritizes a huge Big Tech firm that is Korea’s #1 retailer founded by a Korean-born CEO who hired US lobbyists close to Trump…1/

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Better late than never for EU to try to counter China’s mercantilist trade policy

Makes Trump’s Big Tech/Oligarch First China trade moves look even worse. W/his CEO fellow travelers at the Xi summit, Trump touted Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama sell-some-planes-grains deals as success🤯

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Great line up on trade next Tuesday 6pm for anyone near Pittsburgh on 5/26!

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Great news & a very big deal! The remarkably smart & capable @ChopraUSA will be in charge of oversight & regulation of business, including financial oversight, and also lead for housing affordability for the state of California — aka the fourth largest economy in the world!

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Must-read piece on US-China relationship that explains a lot about the abysmal Trump-Xi summit.

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

“This could be a political lose-lose where ranchers who support Trump are furious and public opinion stays sour because consumer prices don’t drop,” said Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade

4 big packers control 85% of US beef market & can keep retail price↗️ & pay farmers↘️

[Lori Wallach @WallachLori]

Interested to see EU’s reaction

After 8 yrs of US tariffs on many Chinese goods, some 🇨🇳 import tsunami now hits EU. Germany is reportedly losing 10K manufacturing jobs a month

Will that move the EU from conceptual love for a “rules based Int’l order” to questioning the rules?