An alliance of medical manufacturers is calling for tax incentives, tariffs, and stricter enforcement of labor and environmental standards to boost U.S. medical equipment production. This push comes amid concerns over supply chain vulnerabilities exposed by recent hurricanes and ongoing competition from foreign trade partners.

The American Medical Manufacturers Association (AMMA), which represents U.S. businesses that produce medical personal protective equipment (PPE) and its raw materials, publicly launched in 2023. The organization champions a stronger domestic supply chain for essential medical equipment.

Eric Axel, AMMA's executive director, informed FreightWaves via video call that the alliance currently comprises nearly 20 companies, including several startups that emerged during the pandemic. "Some of our companies have been around much longer than the pandemic," Axel stated. "But there was certainly an identification of a problem that in this country we rely on, mostly, nonfriendly, adversarial countries that are not democracies for our critical medical supplies such as PPE. China is not an ally of the U.S., and we learned during the pandemic we rely on them. Not only do we rely on them for a lot of these things, but they can tell us no."

Axel acknowledged that while the U.S. also sources products from more amicable nations like Malaysia and Thailand, these countries do not adhere to the same manufacturing standards as the U.S. (The provided text is incomplete, so the sentence is cut off here).