Appearing Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said he will present President Donald Trump with an executive order aimed at reducing the United States’ dependency on overseas medical supply chains as the country combat the Chinese coronavirus.
A partial transcript is as follows:
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: The New York Times is reporting this morning that the administration is attempted to persuade a Germany firm developing a possible vaccine, the company, CureVac, to move its research development to the United States, this is according to German officials, raising fear, apparently, in Berlin that President Trump was trying to ensure that any enucleation would be available first in the United States and, perhaps, exclusively. Can you speak to that?
PETER NAVARRO: What I can speak to is this broader, interesting issue of how dependent the United States of America is on the global supply chain, not just for its medicines, but for its medical supplies and medical equipment. As we speak, I’m bringing an executive order to the president, he personally asked me to move quickly on this issue. The essence of the exeuctive order, which we hope to get to the finish line by the end of the week, is to bring all of that home, so we don’t have to worry about foreign dependency. 70 percent of our advanced pharmaceutical ingredents comes from abroad.