Warren, Scott revive bill to map foreign control of US drug supply

• The Pharmaceutical Investment Oversight and Accountability Act (S.4987), reintroduced July 15 by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Rick Scott, and Kirsten Gillibrand, would require the FTC and Treasury to produce an annual report on foreign investment across the US pharmaceutical supply chain, including a 10-year look-back at CFIUS reviews of pharma transactions.
• The bill imposes no restrictions itself, but Scott has framed transparency as “the first step” toward possible future action, and analysts warn the findings could expose Europe, not just China, to tariff and policy pressure.

A bipartisan trio of senators has reintroduced legislation that would require the Federal Trade Commission, working with the Treasury Department, to report annually to Congress on how foreign investment and foreign manufacturing shape the US drug supply; a mapping exercise that could set the stage for restrictions on overseas suppliers.

The Pharmaceutical Investment Oversight and Accountability Act, introduced July 15 by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), has been referred to the Senate Banking Committee as S.4987. According to the bill text, the FTC, in consultation with Treasury acting through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), would have one year from enactment to deliver its first report, then update it annually for congressional committees, the HHS Secretary, and the FDA Commissioner, with an unclassified summary published online.

The report’s scope is broad. Per the bill text, it must assess supply chain concentration and reliance on foreign manufacturing, the effect of foreign investment on domestic capacity to produce drugs and both active and inactive ingredients, and foreign investment in DNA sequencing and storage technologies. It also requires a count and description of every CFIUS review or investigation of pharmaceutical manufacturing and DNA-related transactions over the preceding 10 fiscal years, including whether each deal was approved, prohibited, or cleared with mitigation agreements.

The ownership angle is what distinguishes this effort from a straight supply chain audit. “We’re going to examine a different but related problem — not just what drugs are, where drugs are made, but who owns the companies making them,” Scott said at a July 15 Aging Committee hearing, as reported by Fierce Pharma. Fierce Pharma also noted a gap the bill’s sponsors appear to be circling: CFIUS reviews foreign acquisitions of existing US drugmakers and facilities, but has limited jurisdiction over “greenfield” investments where a foreign company builds a new US plant from scratch.

According to Warren’s office, roughly 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients and nearly 100% of raw materials used in US generic drugs are imported. Data cited at the hearing put China’s share of key starting materials at 94% for amoxicillin and 74% for hospital-use heparin. Scott made his target explicit, telling the hearing there is “no reason why we should be letting our adversary, Communist China,” control the medicine supply chain. This is the bill’s third outing — Fierce Pharma notes it was first introduced in 2020 and again in 2024 — but rising tension over China’s biotech sector may give it more traction this time.

It’s too early to say whether S.4987 fares better than its 2020 and 2024 predecessors, both of which stalled. And GlobalData flags a practical constraint on any reshoring push that follows: finite US capacity and qualified personnel could limit how quickly demand can actually be rerouted from Europe and Asia. But the bipartisan sponsorship, the committee hearing momentum, and the broader onshoring policy trend suggest this is a live issue, not a messaging bill.