President Joe Biden boasted in his State of the Union address that he would make more products in the United States, but he did not just allow China to become the largest major supplier of medical rubber gloves to the United States. and refused to complete the formation of a government. The contract factory in rural southwest Virginia was started under former President Donald Trump.
This facility alone would have created thousands of jobs and made it possible to supply medical gloves domestically if the Chinese government decided to cut off supplies.
Scott Meyer, CEO of Blue Star NBR, which was contracted to build the factory, spoke to Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in an exclusive interview on SiriusXM. Breitbart News Saturday About Biden’s failure to supply the United States with American-made medical gloves, instead relying on its largest supplier, China, putting the country at risk.
Meyer said that during the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. found itself running low on personal protective equipment because the Obama administration depleted and failed to replenish emergency stockpiles, medical rubber gloves and other critical supplies were available under the Trump administration. He said that a project has begun to manufacture the product in the United States.
This contract was originally handled by the Department of Defense (DOD) for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
U.S. firearms manufacturers are ramping up regular production, including making masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) for first responders. https://t.co/Qa1fyjyk85
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 30, 2020
Meyer’s company, Bluestar NBR, built a factory to make synthetic rubber for gloves during the 2020 pandemic, as well as an adjacent factory that will actually produce 18 billion to 20 billion gloves a year. I signed a contract to do so. The United States needs 120 billion rubber gloves a year for everything from doctor’s visits to meal preparation.
Construction of the $123 million, state-of-the-art rubber plant was completed in spring 2023, but inflation and rising costs of energy and building materials forced Meyer to spend $60 million to connect to utilities and build a glove factory. It required $170 million.he did it reportedly Funding was never obtained. In May 2023, the Pentagon told him the contract was ending and Meyer would need to get a new contract or find private funding.
Meyer said he was told by Biden’s Health and Human Services Department that there was a lack of funding, according to reports. washington postthe agency signed a new contract in September 2023 with another company for a yet-to-be-built rubber plant in Louisiana that is scheduled to produce rubber two years from now.
Meanwhile, only 2% of the rubber gloves needed in the United States are produced domestically. post. HHS claimed to have expanded production capacity for more gloves, but that was about “infrastructure” and not the actual production itself.
To make matters worse, as Breitbart News’ Boyle recently exclusively reported, despite its responsibility for the pandemic, China is now poised to become the leading supplier of medical gloves in the United States.
“What happened is that at the end of last year China’s supply went from about 14% to about 44%. And, you know, on their current trajectory, by the end of this year they’re going to have about a third of their supply.” 2,” Meyer told Boyle.
Last fall, Meyer had to begin a shutdown period for the factory he had started to avoid this outcome.
And his company is not alone in this situation.
“We’re just one example,” Meyer said. “For nitrile gloves alone, he has six other companies in the same situation, 80% complete but not producing anything. This cost him close to $700 million in investment.”
“If you look at the $17 billion that has been spent, there are probably 50 or 60 companies that own these facilities that are probably 80, 90 percent complete but aren’t actually producing anything.” he added. “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. . ”
A group of Republican senators is pressuring the Biden administration to end this and other projects. Earlier this year, Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio), Josh Hawley (Missouri), and Rick Scott (Florida) sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on this issue. . In a letter dated February 29, they wrote:
Rather than building on the foundation established by President Trump, this administration tried to start from scratch and failed. President Biden was unable to renew President Trump’s executive order, which expires in 2022, or replace it with similar authority. Your department released a 40-page assessment of the public health supply chain and industrial infrastructure, but has not taken appropriate steps to ensure the health of the country. Manufacture of PPE.
But even Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, appealed They appealed to the Biden administration last year to no avail.
Virginia Republican Senate candidate and U.S. Navy veteran Hung Kao highlighted the risks of Chinese-made rubber gloves in a recent exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
“This affects every American every day, from the person packing the meat in the store to the food vendor to the first responders like my wife, who is an EMT. Now the police officer. Even we have to wear them…because we are afraid that if we come into contact with fentanyl, it will be absorbed into our skin.”…We have to wear these things. We depend on them, but quality in China is not the same as quality in America. We live by standards, but what if their standards are wrong? What if something else is mixed in? What I’m saying is that if we don’t act in the United States, anything can happen, and we need to protect our country. we need to protect our people. And that starts with getting all these resources into the country, especially personal protective equipment, PPE. ”
Nevertheless, Biden asserted in his Thursday speech that:
And now, instead of importing foreign products and exporting American jobs, we are exporting American products and creating American jobs. Right here in America where they belong! … Buy American has been the law of the land since the 1930s. Past administrations, including my predecessor, have failed at Buy American.
No more. On my watch, federal projects like those that help build America’s highway bridges and highways are done using American products, made by American workers, and create good-paying American jobs. Sho.
Meyer said what is needed now is for the Biden administration to allocate finishing funds so the plant can be completed and production can begin.
“We know the demand is there. In the private sector, we all realize that sourcing 98 percent of critical items from one region is not a good business model, so all these hospitals are “We want to diversify the chain,” he said.
Meyer said he would welcome former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, to come to his plant in Virginia to see what needs to be done.
He added: “I would like to invite anyone who wants to come and see all the effort that has gone into this, to see a state-of-the-art facility that is largely in storage, capable of producing critical items that this country desperately needs. Everyone is welcome,” he added. But instead, we are simply more dependent on China than we were before the pandemic started,” he said.
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