US leans on India's pharma industry to snub China. There's just one catch

The Biden administration embraced a plan from India's government last year to edge China out of its position as a leader in making ingredients for generic pharmaceuticals sold in the US.

But a new report shows that much of those ingredients are likely still coming from China anyway.

America's reliance on China for drug ingredients has raised alarm bells in Congress. House committees will hold two hearings Tuesday 6 Feb on drug shortages and the US Food and Drug Administration's foreign inspection program, which has seen a large drop in visits to Chinese factories over the last few years, due in large part to the Covid pandemic.

The report put together ahead of the hearings by the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a trade organization pushing for tax breaks for domestic manufacturing, showed India-based Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. gets about 55% of its raw materials for ingredients from China. Aurobindo is a bellwether for the industry: It supplies the most generic drugs by volume to the US, and its $3.1 billion in 2023 revenue was second-highest among Indian drug makers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company's 2022-2023 annual report said it has "a high dependence on the China market" for materials and ingredients used to make drugs.