The following news analysis was first published on SHARYL ATTKISSON‘s Free Substack
For decades, a chorus of voices from across the political spectrum and the mainstream media has warned about the dangers of America’s reliance on foreign nations, particularly China, for critical goods, including medicine and other pharmaceuticals.
These warnings were often framed as urgent national security concerns. They pointed to the national risks of supply chain disruptions, potential geopolitical leverage, and the vulnerability of the U.S. healthcare system.
Democrats, Republicans, and prominent news outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC, and CNN have all sounded the alarm over the years.
Yet, as former President Donald Trump has worked to address the problems in a way that no other president has done, though tariffs, many of these same voices have shifted to criticism with their sole focus on the short-term economic fallout. They seemingly overlook the long-term benefits they once championed, as if the problems they highlighted can somehow be solved magically with the wave of a wand and no short term disruptions.
This is the story of decades-long concerns, a pandemic wake-up call, and a curious case of collective amnesia.
Read on for details.
A History of Warnings
Unease about depending on China for essential goods has been simmering for years. I’ve reported on cautions from a variety of sources on my television program Full Measure. Experts called it an urgent concern that no politicians had the guts or resovle to address. But I’m not alone in reporting on the controversy. Many liberal-leaning news outlets joined in.
In 2019, The Washington Post published an article titled “China’s control of U.S. pharmaceutical supplies sparks growing concern.” It highlighted how China’s dominance in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) posed a national security risk.
The story noted that disruptions—whether from trade disputes or geopolitical tensions—risked leaving Americanswithout vital drugs. The story quoted bipartisan experts and lawmakers who called for action).
Similarly, The New York Times raised red flags in 2018 about reliance on China for critical minerals used in defense technologies.
The article underscored a broader anxiety about depending on a single foreign power for strategic goods, warning that such dependence could compromise national security.
A year later, in 2019, NBC aired a segment where experts cautioned that China’s control over medical supply manufacturing could be weaponized, potentially cutting off access to life-saving drugs during a crisis.
Many other organizations have echoed these concerns over the years. A 2017 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned that reliance on China for critical infrastructure components, including those in healthcare, posed a strategic vulnerability. And in 2019, the liberal The Atlanticcalled for a strategic rethink of U.S. dependence on China, arguing that the risks extended beyond economics to national security.
Democrats and Republicans have long spoken of the problem.
In 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced legislation to boost domestic production of critical medical supplies, declaring, “Our reliance on foreign countries for life-saving drugs and medical equipment is a national security issue.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed measures in 2020 to reduce dependence on China for pharmaceuticals, warning, “We cannot allow China to hold our healthcare system hostage.”
These calls reflected a rare bipartisan consensus on the need to address this vulnerability. Yet this background seems to be absent from the current debate over the Trump tariffs and their goals.
The COVID-19 Wake-Up Call
America has had several chances to get a taste of how those hypothetical risks could become a stark reality.
In 2008, contaminated heparin (a blood-thinner) from China led to dozens of deaths in the U.S., raising alarms about quality control and reliance on foreign production and prompting The New York Times to question the safety of foreign drug supply chains.
In 2012, a shortage of generic injectable drugs, many sourced from overseas, prompted warnings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about the U.S.’s lack of domestic manufacturing capacity and reliance on foreign manufacturers.
Covid put a punctuation point on the risks.
In 2020, The Washington Post reported on severe shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical supplies, many of which were manufactured in China. The newspaper reported that as global supply chains faltered, hospitals across the U.S. struggled to secure masks, gloves, and ventilators.
A 2020 New York Times article delved into the pharmaceutical supply chain, noting that many generic drugs relied on Chinese and Indian production, leaving the U.S. with little oversight or backup in a crisis like Covid.
CNN covered the issue too, reporting in 2020 on the Trump administration’s push to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the U.S., driven by national security concerns exposed by the pandemic. CNN noted that Covid revealed how “dependent we are on Chinese-made drugs and supplies,” amplifying calls for domestic production (CNN, 2020).
A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that same year detailed how shortages of ventilators and other equipment underscored the fragility of global supply chains, urging greater resilience.
In New York, a hospital administrator recounted the chaos of the pandemic’s early days: “We were begging for PPE, reusing masks, and praying shipments would arrive. It was a nightmare.” Such stories highlighted the real-world consequences of dependence on distant suppliers.
2025: Trump Tariffs Meet Selective Criticism
Enter President Trump’s tariffs. They’re aimed at encouraging domestic production and reducing reliance on foreign manufacturing, particularly from China. The very thing a wide group of experts have called for—even demanded—for decades. Trump’s policies, including a 54% tariff on Chinese imports and 25% on auto parts from various nations, are designed to bring production back to the U.S., echoing the national security goals once championed by both parties and the press.
Yet, the response from many has been a pivot to one-sided criticism and a narrow focus on immediate economic fallout, often ignoring the broader aim of reducing foreign dependence.
Here are several examples.
- The Washington Post (May 2, 2025): An opinion piece titled “Trump’s tariff pain is rapidly approaching” warned that tariffs are “destabilizing the economy” and driving up costs for consumers, predicting a potential recession. The article emphasized market volatility and higher grocery prices but made no mention of the policy’s goal to bolster domestic manufacturing or address national security risks tied to reliance on China. This one-sided take glossed over the strategic intent, framing tariffs as reckless, without context.
- The New York Times (April 2, 2025): In “Trump Imposes Vast Global Tariffs,” the Times detailed the 10% baseline tariff on all imports and 54% on Chinese goods, warning of “higher prices for American consumers” and a potential “global trade war.” The article quoted critics like Matt Priest of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, who called the tariffs “catastrophic,” but omitted any discussion of how tariffs might reduce dependence on foreign pharmaceuticals or critical materials, a concern the Times itself raised in 2018. The focus was squarely on short-term costs, sidelining the policy’s long-term objectives.
- CNN (April 3, 2025): A report on Trump’s tariffs described a “plunge in U.S. stock markets” and quoted market strategist Michael Block calling the policy “bad economics” and “bad mathematics.” The piece highlighted retail stock declines and consumer price concerns but failed to acknowledge the tariffs’ aim to rebuild U.S. manufacturing capacity or mitigate risks of foreign supply chain disruptions, despite CNN’s own 2020 reporting on COVID-era shortages. This selective framing ignored the national security rationale.
- NBC News (April 3, 2025): NBC covered the tariffs’ impact on global markets, noting a “broad market sell-off” and quoting a bipartisan Senate bill’s sponsors, who argued for congressional oversight due to price hike risks. The report emphasized economic disruption and ally backlash but didn’t mention the goal of reducing reliance on Chinese drugs or materials, a topic NBC covered in 2019. The omission painted the tariffs as purely harmful.
- Reuters (April 4, 2025): An article titled “Trump tariffs sow fears of trade wars, recession and a $2,300 iPhone” warned of a global downturn and sharp price hikes, quoting Japan’s Prime Minister calling it a “national crisis.” While it briefly noted Vice President JD Vance’s defense of tariffs for “national security of manufacturing,” the piece quickly pivoted to consumer cost fears, downplaying the strategic goal of reducing foreign dependence.
- The Wall Street Journal (April 3, 2025): A piece on market reactions highlighted a 5% S&P 500 drop and warned of inflation, quoting economists who called tariffs a “tax on consumers.” It mentioned Trump’s claim of boosting domestic production but dismissed it as unlikely to materialize soon, focusing instead on immediate economic pain without engaging with the national security rationale.
These 2025 critiques share a pattern: they hammer on price increases, market volatility, and trade war risks while rarely acknowledging the tariffs’ aim to address the very vulnerabilities the same outlets and politicial figures in both parties once decried.
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In this article, SA takes the “media” to task for (I’m guessing here because she doesn’t say it clearly) hypocrisy because they are complaining about Trump’s tariffs while forgetting that they have long been calling for a lessened dependence on Chinese manufacturing. The problem with this critique is that it conflates two different things. The first thing, lessening dependence on Chinese manufacturing, is an overarching policy goal. The second thing, the tariffs, is a means (one of several possible ones) of achieving that goal. They are not the same things.
Think of it this way: two people could agree on the goal of reducing dependency on China but disagree on how to go about it. In this specific case, just because the media is “attacking” Trump for his tariffs doesn’t at all mean that they have decided not to reduce our dependency on them. They might just disagree with the methodology. Note that in the first part of the article detailing the media’s history on this subject, the word “tariff’ never comes up.
SA complains that “the response from many has been a pivot to one-sided criticism and a narrow focus on immediate economic fallout, often ignoring the broader aim of reducing foreign dependence”. I find that rich on several fronts. The first front is from Trump himself who, during the campaign, said that his tariffs would not cause prices to go up (something that no serious economist believed). Now he’s publicly admitting that they will. So I guess he lied to all of us back then. But we’re not reading that in this newsletter. The second front is that the media is ignoring the “broader aim of reducing foreign dependence”. But they are clearly writing about it (even some of SA’s selected quotes show that); they just don’t believe that it will work (and neither do most economists). The third front is that SA is complaining about “one-sided criticism”. So just go back and read practically any article that has ever been in this newsletter about reputed harm from vaccines and ask yourself how many of those articles contained input from anyone defending vaccine safety. The answer, I believe, is zero. So let’s not get too worked up over “one-sided” attacks here. Especially “one-sided” attacks which accurately reflect the opinions of almost every (if not literally every) economist. In fact, if the media wrote anything defending the tariffs, they would have to be putting their opinions into their pieces (since it runs afoul of what the experts believe), something that SA has complained about for years.
Now SA is smart enough to know that she is comparing apples and oranges here. So why would she do it? Because it allows her to keep her streak intact of never criticizing anything that Trump has ever done. And if you don’t agree with that statement, point to some articles where she has.
Isn’t so typical of Democrats. If it’s anything to do with DJT then they hate it.
Take a look at their own incompetence.
How many hours do they actually work? Compared to how many hours they bitch and complain.
It’s no wonder they are so unpopular. The reason they lost big time in 2024.