Trump administration is big on Puerto Rico as a medical manufacturing hub | Opinion
China fired, Puerto Rico, hired — that’s the news behind the news that the Trump administration recently awarded a $10 million contract to Copan Diagnostics to expand its manufacturing of testing swabs by 3.6 million a week at its facility in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
This deal marks the first of what is likely to be many more medical industrial expansion projects in Puerto Rico aimed at creating good jobs while saving lives. This deal is also yet one more piece of evidence that President Trump is keeping his 2020 promise to make America the “premier medical manufacturer, pharmacy, and drugstore of the world.”
Since the arrival of a deadly virus, Copan has played an important role in providing the swabs needed to rapidly expand America’s testing capabilities. For example, in early March, Copan needed to move close to a million swabs from its factory in Italy to six different cities across the United States. However, because of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Italy particularly hard, the Italian government had restricted its airspace for commercial flights.
The White House mobilized a Department of Defense flight to pick up Copan’s swabs and land them in Memphis, Tennessee. With the help of its CEO, Fred Smith, FedEx planes met the military flight on the tarmac, and the swabs were delivered within 72 hours of a request for assistance from Copan.
Yet there remains much work ahead of us to defeat the coronavirus, and Puerto Rico and its high-quality workforce are going to play an ever-increasing role in this critical battle.
With an increasing number of college graduates having STEM degrees, Puerto Rico is well equipped with talented engineers, chemists, and pharmaceutical supply chain experts to handle this renaissance. Because this is so, key Trump administration officials are now looking at both short-term opportunities like the Copan deal to defeat the coronavirus as well as long-term economic development opportunities to help bring our pharma supply chains home.
If we have learned anything from this pandemic, it is that America can no longer afford to be dangerously dependent on foreign sources for its essential medicines, medical supplies like masks and swabs and medical equipment like ventilators. This is particularly true for China, which has threatened to withhold critical supplies from America unless we accommodate its demands.
Peter Navarro is assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy.
