By Andrea Shalal at Reuters
U.S. Congressman Richard Neal is calling on the U.S. government to consider dropping tariffs on the much-needed medical supply imports needed to fight coronavirus for 90 days, and is calling on the U.S. to re-structure their own medical supply chains to aid in improving domestic production of these critical items for the future.
According to Neal, this pandemic has uncovered the vulnerability of our medical supply chain. “The United States faces a public health crisis that has fully exposed the insecurity of our medical supply chains and the dangers of our eroded manufacturing base. This emergency is a wake-up call. “
“To prevent the dangerous supply shortfalls that we are experiencing now from happening again in the future, we need to improve the resilience of our critical supply chains and re-establish our industrial manufacturing base,” he said.
Neal said the health crisis had been exacerbated by a shortage in supplies, personal protective equipment (PPE), and medicines. Many U.S. companies were now stepping up to resolve the shortage, but the government should also remove impediments to the importation of needed goods, such as tariffs, he said.
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