President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that will lay out a strategy to increase biomanufacturing domestically to reduce our reliance on China for these products. Biden signed the order before giving a speech in Boston on Monday morning, an address designed to echo John F. Kennedy’s famous 1962 “moonshot speech,” in which he called for the landing of an American on the lunar surface, which was accomplished in 1969. U.S. national security and intelligence officials are concerned, so these efforts are to reduce reliance on China for different medicines and chemicals.
This time, Biden is advocating for government-supported efforts to coordinate and fund a multifaceted cancer fight, with the goal of cutting cancer death rates in half within the next 25 years. The White House is set to hold a summit on September 14 to further discuss the biotech initiative and announce the different kinds of domestic investments that have been made. While the United States has one of the world’s most powerful biotechnology industries, some hi-tech production has moved abroad. National security and intelligence officials in the United States are particularly concerned about the country’s reliance on China’s advanced biomanufacturing infrastructure. South China Morning Post reported that The National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative will aim to create new jobs, strengthen the supply chain, and lower prices. The industry has relied too heavily on foreign materials and Biden is ready to domesticate more of this process within the United States. The pandemic has created a sense of urgency within the Biden administration to domesticate more and more of our production to balance and improve our local economy here at home. The order outlines how the United States should train and diversify its workforce to create bio-based products and materials using naturally occurring processes.
