Beijing can gain leverage over American families without a shooting war. Owning the pipeline of new medicines would be enough, and China moves closer to that every year.
Jeffrey Mazella, president of the Center for Individual Freedom, laid out the problem in The Washington Times (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/15/beat-china-america-must-first-cut-red-tape/) in August. Beijing has made biotechnology a national priority and keeps government money flowing behind it. China can now move a molecule from discovery to clinical trial 50% to 70% faster than the rest of the world. By his count, China's share of early-stage drug programs reached 35% in 2024, about four times what it was a decade earlier.
Wall Street is seeing it too. Morgan Stanley projects (https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/china-biotech-boom-generics-to-innovators) that drugs originating in China will make up 35% of FDA approvals by 2040, up from about 5% today. Congress's own National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93-Digital-%E2%80%934.28.pdf) concluded last year that "China is quickly ascending to biotechnology dominance, having made biotechnology a strategic priority for 20 years." If China gets to biotech's breakthrough moment first, the commission warned, "no matter how fast we run, we will never catch up."
One of Washington's favorite ideas right now would hobble the American side of that race. The administration has signed voluntary "Most Favored Nation" pricing agreements with 17 of the largest drugmakers (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Savings-from-MFN-Drug-Pricing-Policy.pdf) and says it is working with Congress to make them permanent law. A House bill, the Most Favored Patient Act (http://meuser.house.gov/media/press-releases/meuser-introduces-bill-lower-prescription-drug-prices), would require any manufacturer that has not signed a deal by December 2028 to provide MFN pricing in Medicare for five years.
The pitch is easy to follow. Tie what Americans pay to what other wealthy countries pay. The catch is how those countries get their prices. Their governments set them by decree. Pegging American prices to those numbers brings in the same price controls conservatives have warned against for decades. They just come in through a side door.
The President was right to go after foreign freeloading. Locking foreign price benchmarks into federal statute would be a different and far worse move, because the money for the next cure has to come from somewhere. Mazella points out that venture funding rounds for U.S. biotech fell by more than 25% from 2024 to 2025, and he ties federal and state price-control efforts directly to that pullback. Generics take a hit too. Health economist Melanie Whittington estimated for Leerink's Center for Pharmacoeconomics (https://leerink.com/article/the-price-of-lower-drug-prices/) that every additional $140 million in brand-name sales before a patent expires is associated with about one more generic competitor in the first year. Cut that revenue by government order and patients should expect fewer cheap generics later on.
Washington can go after freeloading another way, and the administration has already proved it works. Under its deal with the United States, Britain agreed to spend around 25% more on innovative medicines (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-uk-us-pharmaceuticals-deal-to-safeguard-medicines-access-and-drive-vital-investmentfor-uk-patients-and-businesses), raising the cost-effectiveness threshold its health agency uses from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000 per quality-adjusted life year. More of that, please. Make the countries riding on American research pay more, and stop asking American patients to accept their rationed prices.
The other half of the affordability problem lives in the middle of the supply chain. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the three biggest pharmacy benefit managers processed nearly 80% of the roughly 6.6 billion prescriptions (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-releases-interim-staff-report-prescription-drug-middlemen) filled in 2023. A follow-up FTC report found those same three marked up specialty generic drugs for cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses by hundreds and even thousands of percent (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-releases-second-interim-staff-report-prescription-drug-middlemen), pulling in more than $7.3 billion above estimated acquisition costs from 2017 through 2022. A foreign price benchmark won't touch any of that.
Louisiana got to this fight before Washington did. Last year Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to bar PBMs from owning pharmacies. CVS responded by texting customers that it would have to close more than 100 stores. Attorney General Liz Murrill then filed three lawsuits against the company (https://www.nola.com/news/politics/louisiana-cvs-pbms-drug-prices/article_0fde2197-0ece-4906-817c-8396d14b8e94.html). Lawmakers also passed reforms tightening how PBMs profit and requiring more disclosure. Washington should take notes.
It also needs to clear its own regulatory brush. In June, HHS launched Operation TrialBlazer (https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-launches-clinical-trials-reform-initiative.html) to speed up early clinical trials in the United States, and the FDA has opened an expedited pilot (https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-launches-expedited-ind-pilot-begins-accepting-applications) for first-in-human studies. Mazella wants to go further, toward safe trials measured in months rather than years, and toward stronger patent protection.
Louisiana has homework of its own. This year the Legislature created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board (https://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1483288) that takes effect January 1, 2027. One of its duties is an annual list of drugs whose cost in Louisiana is "excessively high when compared with the cost of the drug in other states and countries." That is MFN thinking, now showing up in Baton Rouge. Colorado shows where boards like this can end up. Its board has already adopted an upper payment limit on Enbrel (https://doi.colorado.gov/sites/doi/files/documents/Adopted%20UPL%20Rule%20for%20Enbrel_1.pdf), a government-set ceiling that starts in 2027. Louisiana's board should stay a reporting body and nothing more.
When MFN codification comes up for a vote, our congressional delegation will have a say. They should push for tougher terms on foreign freeloaders and for real PBM reform. Then they should vote no on writing Europe's price list into federal law while Beijing keeps building labs.
Posts filed under China
To Beat China, America Must First Cut Its Own Red Tape
Don't give Beijing sole control of new treatments and life-saving therapies
Jeffrey Mazella
August 15, 2026
American leadership in biotechnology resulted from decades of investment. It consists of a market-driven system that rewards critically necessary innovation and a regulatory framework built to move science from lab to patient faster than anywhere else in the world.
And for most of the past half-century, our leadership went unchallenged. In recent years, however, that has shifted.
China has made biotech a national priority by dedicating sustained government financing and long-term industrial planning to the industry.
Unfortunately for the United States, it’s working.
China’s workforce claims high rates of advanced degree graduates in STEM disciplines. Over the past decade, the government has cut red tape to streamline review and approval processes and has bolstered domestic patent protections.
China has established the infrastructure needed to take a molecule from discovery to clinical trial 50% to 70% faster than the rest of the world. As a result, it is closer than ever to securing leadership of the global biotech industry.
Since 2015, for instance, the share of early-stage drug programs originating in China has quadrupled, reaching a high of 35% in 2024.
This past summer, the first-ever study originating in China was featured at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and its resulting therapy is now under review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a likely preview of many more to come.
Projections indicate that Chinese drugs could make up 35% of FDA approvals by 2040 – a sevenfold increase from the current 5%.
Even without China’s ascent, however, U.S. biotech strength faces mounting risk. New and existing policies from Washington make it increasingly difficult to innovate at home and create unnecessary interventions that the free market could easily resolve.
Federal and state efforts to implement drug price controls stifle investments into research and development. Venture capital-backed rounds of funding for U.S. biotech dropped by over 25% percent from 2024 to 2025.
Needless bureaucracy at the FDA delays early-stage U.S. trials by years, with one recent analysis revealing that FDA effectiveness-review postponements of one to six years cost consumers and producers $4 trillion to $61 trillion in foregone combined value.
Attempts to weaken or reverse critical patent protections discourage Americans’ innovative spirit.
Unfortunately, the newest idea from Washington for countering China’s rise threatens to compound the problem. The Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act (COINS) Act gives the U.S. Treasury Department the power to restrict or block U.S. investment in China and other countries of concern for sectors it considers security risks.
The legislation was conceived to target technologies related to artificial intelligence, super-computing and others, but U.S. officials are now floating the idea of adding biopharmaceuticals to the list of affected industries.
Doing so would only aggravate matters by cutting American companies off from the licensing deals, joint research and vendor agreements that allow U.S. firms to discover, develop and deliver treatments built in part on early-stage compounds developed in China.
In other words, China would be handed sole control of those new treatments and life-saving therapies, threatening to delay or outright restrict U.S. patient access.
This is not the way to win the race against China. Instead, the U.S. must lean into what already sets our nation apart: a free-market spirit that promotes and rewards innovation unburdened by unnecessary government red tape.
President Trump has already shown that this kind of overhaul is possible. His permitting reform efforts cut through years of regulatory sprawl to get energy and infrastructure projects moving again. The same can and should be done for America’s biopharmaceutical industry.
In June, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched “Operation TrialBlazer,” a new initiative to strengthen American leadership in clinical research, fast-track breakthroughs and guarantee patient access to cutting-edge therapies.
The FDA, acknowledging China’s gains in biomedical research, is now soliciting feedback through a request for information on a promising pilot program intended to streamline the process from drug identification to first-in-human study.
That’s good news, but leaders must further prioritize modernizing the FDA so that safe trials are counted in months rather than years, strengthen IP frameworks and increase investment incentives to drive more R&D.
Well-intentioned attempts to protect national security interests must be precisely targeted to specific threats, not applied so broadly as to undercut American biopharmaceutical competitiveness or leave patients unable to access the treatments of tomorrow.
Beijing isn’t slowing down to wait for Washington. Counterproductive efforts like banning outbound biotech investment won’t speed America up. It’s time for the U.S. to accelerate efforts to cut red tape and step on the gas.
The only way to beat China is to outcompete it.
Jeffrey Mazella is president of the Center for Individual Freedom.
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KEENAN: Congress Must Lock In America’s Chip Lead Before China Closes the Window
America builds the best computer chips in the world, and China’s Communist Party wants them.
That single fact should drive the entire debate in Washington over artificial intelligence export controls, because what’s at stake isn’t a niche trade dispute between two economies. It’s whether the most important technology of this century gets built on American soil, by American workers, under American rules, or whether we hand Beijing the tools to catch up to us militarily.
That last word matters more than people realize, because there is no such thing as a purely commercial Chinese tech company. Under Chinese law, every business of any size operates with a Communist Party committee embedded inside it, and under Beijing’s “military-civil fusion” strategy, any breakthrough a private Chinese firm makes in AI, chips, or advanced manufacturing is available to the People’s Liberation Army on demand. China’s own National Intelligence Law requires companies to hand over data and cooperate with state intelligence work whenever asked, no court order required. So when we talk about China “competing” with American chipmakers in a free market, we’re using the wrong words entirely. There is no free market on the other side of that transaction. There’s the Chinese state, using private companies as a front, and every dollar of ground that Chinese business gains, the Chinese military gains right alongside it.
That’s why the usual free-trade instinct, that competition is good and government should stay out of the way, doesn’t apply here. Competition assumes both sides are playing the same game. China isn’t. It’s a system where the state directs capital, protects favored firms, and treats intellectual property theft as an arm of national strategy, not a violation of it. We’ve seen this play out again and again, from Chinese manufacturers copying Tesla’s designs down to the dashboard, to counterfeit iPhones built on stolen Apple engineering, all while Beijing’s government not only looks the other way but frequently subsidizes and shields the theft. When American chip technology ends up inside a Chinese AI system, it isn’t feeding a competitor in a fair fight. It’s feeding a government that treats every private success as state property the moment it’s useful.
This isn’t a new pattern either. The U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing collapsed from 40 percent in 1990 to just 12 percent today, largely because policymakers let production drift overseas and assumed markets would sort it out. Solar panels and batteries followed the same script, and in both cases China’s state-directed industrial machine, not some neutral marketplace, is what took the ground we gave up. AI infrastructure represents trillions of dollars in coming investment. Strong export controls are what keep that buildout here, instead of in China or in third countries willing to quietly reroute American hardware to a Communist Party that will use it for whatever purpose it decides serves the state.
Critics claim controls hurt American chipmakers, but the record says otherwise. The two years following the first major round of restrictions were among the best on record for U.S. chipmaking equipment suppliers, as customers outside China filled the gap within months. Nvidia profits from selling chips, including to China, but Washington’s job is to protect national security and America’s economic edge, not to maximize one company’s quarterly numbers, especially when that company’s Chinese customers answer to Beijing whether they admit it or not.
Which brings us to the piece that should worry Americans most: this is ultimately about who wins the next war. Advanced AI will power everything from autonomous weapons to military intelligence and battlefield decision-making, and because of military-civil fusion, there is no meaningful line in China between a chip that trains a chatbot and a chip that trains a targeting system. Every AI gain China books commercially is a gain its military can draw on directly.
China knows it’s behind, and it knows chips are the bottleneck. The founder of DeepSeek, China’s answer to ChatGPT, has said chip access, not money and not talent, is his company’s single biggest obstacle. That hasn’t stopped Beijing from trying to cheat its way around the rules, using the same state-directed playbook it uses everywhere else. Smugglers have moved hundreds of millions of dollars in restricted GPUs into China, some of it hidden in prosthetic baby bumps and packed alongside shipments of live lobsters. Huawei, a company with deep ties to the Chinese state and military, ran a shell company to illegally source more than two million chips out of Taiwan before it got caught. Front companies keep popping up in third countries for the sole purpose of buying chips their real end users aren’t legally allowed to have.
Because computing power roughly doubles every two years, the American chips shipping today outpace anything China can build on its own, and that gap compounds if it’s allowed to hold. Some estimates put Chinese AI training costs at ten times higher than American costs by 2027, if controls stay in place.
The technology leadership case follows the same logic. Nvidia and the rest of the American chip industry supply virtually every major AI system on the planet, including systems operating inside China, because there’s no credible Chinese alternative at scale. Huawei’s best chip, the Ascend, doesn’t come close to Nvidia’s leading products, and China can’t manufacture them in real volume anyway. The CEO of ASML, the company that makes the world’s most critical chip-manufacturing equipment, has said current restrictions will leave China 10 to 15 years behind the West in advanced chip production. That’s the margin worth defending, and the next two to four years are the decisive window. If controls hold, American training clusters keep pulling further ahead with each new generation of hardware. If they weaken, a state-directed Chinese military-industrial complex closes that gap during the most consequential stretch in the history of the technology.
There’s a global dimension too. Right now there’s almost no Chinese AI hardware deployed outside China’s own borders, because Chinese chips simply can’t compete. Countries building their AI infrastructure on American chips stay inside a U.S.-aligned technology ecosystem. Countries that build on Chinese chips become dependent on a supply chain the Chinese Communist Party can shape, monitor, or cut off at will. Export controls are how America keeps the rest of the world in its orbit rather than Beijing’s.
The goal is preserving America’s lead during the window when it matters most, the years when AI capability is advancing fastest and today’s advantage compounds into tomorrow’s dominance, or evaporates. This was never a fair fight between two private sectors, and pretending otherwise is how we lose it. China’s government is trying to build the most powerful military AI in history using American-made chips and a private sector that exists to serve the state. Congress needs to pass strong, permanent controls before that window closes for good.
BELL: Don’t Let Congress Jeopardize Texas’ Data Security
China wants to undermine our national security. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Texas.
There are credible threats that Chinese nationals are buying up thousands of acres here to spy on American military installations. But the Chinese Communist Party isn’t just interested in our property. It also wants to control our financial services.
Read more: BELL: Don’t Let Congress Jeopardize Texas’ Data Security
