US begins probes into pharmaceutical and chip imports, setting stage for tariffs

mindlight said:

The key with generics is the regulation and the price. If India makes them cheaper, that is a good thing, but the manufacturing process and final product have to be regulated. Both the EU and the FDA, on behalf of the USA, do this quite effectively. Reshoring generic production will only add to costs. Stockpiling is an answer to the wartime scenario, these things are not space intensive.

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No they do not regulate them effectively. It helps, but there are still quality concerns. Below is an article where the FDA found serious lies at their India plant. Wondering how many they did not find?
The FDA Finally Visited an Indian Drug Factory Linked to U.S. Deaths. It Found Problems. "The Food and Drug Administration has found problems at an Indian factory that makes generic drugs for American patients, including one medication that was manufactured there and has been linked to at least eight deaths, federal records show."
All are recent issues and I am sure I barely scratched the surface. I am not saying China does better but many would prefer their generics from America or Western countries where the oversight is greater and the ethics of GMP and quality standards are far more adhered to.
Stockpiling is good, but all drugs have expiry dates. Drug manufacturing is fairly automated. We should bring more manufacturing back in this area for security and for safety. We need an FDA that is funded though of course.

mindlight said:

Drug pricing is a crucial component of reshoring discussions, and Big Pharma is having a field day because you do not have a large enough public body to moderate bad prices and bad behavior among producers. Your supplier-consumer relationship is out of whack.

You can do the Google search yourself, but here, for example:

In general, prescription drug prices are significantly higher in the United States compared to Germany. U.S. prices can be 2.78 to 3.22 times higher than those in other OECD countries, including Germany

Buy American is definitely not the way forward for affordable health care, at least not without fundamental reforms that no one is going to make. The FDA is already in place for quality control, so given the handicap of Big Pharma reshoring is just expensive and unnecessary in this case.

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As you noted, it is the organization of US healthcare expenditure (and "big pharma" using it to squeeze out profits from US insurance payers) that keeps prices for drugs high. The locality of production is a minor issue in comparison.

mindlight said:

You cannot make chips without the lithographic inscribers. Right now, the only good ones are made by ASML, so go easy on the Dutch. These machines are very expensive and it is doubtful you will develop the economies of scale in chip production to compete with the Taiwanese in anything less than 5 years, so long after Trump is gone.

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No one is talking about making lithographic equipment in the US. The availability of "rare earths" to the US has nothing to do with the Dutch production of such equipment.

mindlight said:

The magnets in high-performance chips help moderate and stabilize the current storing excess in a magnetic field, they also reduce Electromagnetic interference and

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I looked and can not find reference to such features in processors, high-performance or otherwise.

mindlight said:

in some chips help establish orientation (direction) the compass /up down apps.

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a minor application

Hans Blaster said:

As you noted, it is the organization of US healthcare expenditure (and "big pharma" using it to squeeze out profits from US insurance payers) that keeps prices for drugs high. The locality of production is a minor issue in comparison.

No one is talking about making lithographic equipment in the US. The availability of "rare earths" to the US has nothing to do with the Dutch production of such equipment.

I looked and can not find reference to such features in processors, high-performance or otherwise.

a minor application

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If us health care cannot be reformed then the locality of production is not a minor issue.You simply increase costs for no gain.

The discussion is about tariffs. The asml machinery is the key to creating high end chips and you are in a tariff war with Holland

Not sure how you are filtering this discussion or your searches - you are quite simply wrong and the current explanations suffice.

mindlight said:

If us health care cannot be reformed then the locality of production is not a minor issue.You simply increase costs for no gain.

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Sigh. Yes pointless tariffs on pharmaceuticals would raise consumer prices, but the nature of the drug markets in the US don't have anything to do with tariffs, nor will they be altered by any.

mindlight said:

The discussion is about tariffs. The asml machinery is the key to creating high end chips and you are in a tariff war with Holland

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Our discussion was about "rare earths". The use of them in ASML's machinery is not a matter of availability of REEs to the US, but to the places where they are made. (And "Holland" isn't a country.)

mindlight said:

Not sure how you are filtering this discussion or your searches - you are quite simply wrong and the current explanations suffice.

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I'm wrong that I couldn't find something I'd never heard of? Seriously?