The Biden administration is shutting down yet another factory that would have provided critical medical supplies to the United States without relying on China in the event of another national emergency.
A factory in which the federal government invested nearly $100 million to produce nitrile rubber gloves remains unfinished despite breaking ground in March 2022. report.
A state-of-the-art plant in Baltimore County, Maryland, formerly occupied by Bethlehem Steel, will attract $350 million in public and private investment, create 2,000 new jobs and bring manufacturing back to Sparrows Point. I was aiming for it. within a year.
However, the factory has not yet produced a single glove, the plant remains unfinished, and “federal authorities remain at arm’s length,” the report said.
United Safety Technologies, which was contracted to build the factory, needs more funding from the federal government and cannot compete with China, which became the largest supplier of rubber gloves under the Biden administration.
“Honestly, I think this is a national story,” said Dan Isacky, founder of United Safety Technologies.
The Biden administration also turned its back on a state-of-the-art rubber plant that was nearly completed, even though Virginia’s top two Democratic senators asked the administration for help.
During the pandemic, the federal government gave Blue Star NBR $123 million in grants for the factory and an adjacent glove-making plant, but inflation and rising costs for energy and building materials meant that the CEO )’s Scott Meyer said he needed $60 million to connect it to the utility and donated $170 million to build a glove factory, but said he didn’t get the money. he said. In May 2023, the Biden Department of Defense (DOD) notified Biden that the contract was ending and Meyer would need to obtain a new contract or find private funding.
During the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan, China, and spread across the globe, killing millions worldwide, American hospitals and front-line workers have been left without masks, gloves, respirators, and basic supplies. They were busy competing for medical supplies. Many of the supplies needed were produced overseas in Asia and were difficult to obtain. Additionally, the National Strategic Stockpile was depleted by the Obama administration during the 2009 swine flu crisis and was never replenished.
The Trump administration has launched a massive effort to restart production of critical medical supplies in the United States. The Department of Defense and Health and Human Services, tasked with domestically producing PPE, pharmaceutical ingredients, and other critical supplies, have awarded $16 billion in contracts to companies for 87 different manufacturing projects.
But the Biden administration has distanced itself from these projects. China, which had only a small portion of the rubber glove market at the beginning of the pandemic, is now poised to dominate the market.
As Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle reported, since Biden took office in the White House in 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has rapidly seized market share in imports of nitrile medical gloves from the United States. are doing.
In 2019, the U.S. relied on China for about 14.2% of its medical gloves, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC). Domestic manufacturing accounted for zero percent, while countries much friendlier to the United States than China, such as Malaysia and Thailand, accounted for 85.7 percent of imports.
However, since President Biden took office, China’s share of medical glove imports to the United States has increased to 26.8%, while other countries’ share has decreased to 73.1%. Two years later, in 2023, China increased its share of medical glove imports to the United States to 44.15%, while other countries’ share decreased to only 53.6%. In 2023, the United States produced about 2.22% of the medical gloves used domestically, thanks to a program launched during the pandemic under the Trump administration but stalled under the Biden administration.
“If nothing changes at this rate, the United States will rely on China for approximately 60% of its domestic medical gloves use in 2024,” Boyle wrote.
During the pandemic, the federal government awarded six companies $574 million to make rubber gloves worn by doctors, nurses and other technicians, and another $123 million for a planned nitrile rubber plant in Virginia. gave a dollar. United Safety Technologies won a $96.1 million federal grant to make the rubber gloves and raised an additional $250 million in private investment, according to the Baltimore Banner. However, he is the only two of the six award winners currently manufacturing gloves.
Meyer said it’s not just rubber glove factories that are suffering.
“If you look at the $17 billion that has been spent, there are probably 50 or 60 other companies that have these facilities that are probably 80, 90 percent complete but aren’t actually producing anything. ,” Meyer said in an interview with Breitbart News. last month. “Again, we need to make sure that the critical items that we need are manufactured here in the United States, or at least some of them, so that we never end up in a situation where we can’t get these critical items.”
Meyer said they appealed to the Biden administration, but their requests went unheeded.
“When we go to the government… they say, “We want the private sector to come in.” Unfortunately, when the government steps in and starts projects like this, it crowds out the private sector. And then the private sector looks into it and says, “Looks like the government has really abandoned you.” They’re not giving us the money to finish the factory, they’re not even buying the products that are coming out. . ”
Tinglon Day, a professor of operations management and business analysis at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, said few people seem interested in subsidizing American-made gloves now that the pandemic is over. he told the Baltimore Banner. “It was a very feel-good story at the time,” he said.
But Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that examines government subsidies, said one thing the government could do is force federal agencies to buy American-made gloves. , said that this would ensure that domestic industry’s stable demand could be met even in small quantities.
Ijaky said he is still holding out hope and that, like the rubber plant factory, it is almost complete.
“We spent a lot of money building the plant and renovating the facility,” he told the Baltimore Banner. “The equipment is there.”
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