EnThe U.S. government, under President Trump’s authority, has triggered the Defense Procurement Act in order to secure supplies of critical healthcare equipment during the coronavirus outbreak.
The authorization allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to enforce priority orders of personal protective equipment and ventilators – and other products as required but not yet specific – from manufacturers in the U.S. and presumably overseas where available.
Access to imports of protective equipment is already at risk of restriction given new rules imposed in the EU, Turkey and India among others, as outlined in Panjiva’s research of March 18.
At the same time the Trump administration is reportedly in talks with automakers including GM and Ford to make ventilators, the Financial Times reports. While technically far from simple to deliver such a move would provide the automakers with an important revenue stream as the core automotive business slows.
From a more practical perspective is the plan announced by Medtronic to double its production of ventilators in the U.S.
Panjiva data shows that U.S. imports of medical ventilators and parts were worth $2.68 billion in the 12 months to Jan. 31. Growth of 6.7% year over year in Q4 has accelerated to 16.2% in January. Leading supplier nations include Singapore and the EU with 34.8% and 11.2% of supplies respectively. Imports from the latter surged 113.6% higher in January. Shipments from China accounted for 16.5% though there has been a decline in shipments likely linked to section 301 duties.
It’s also worth noting that the U.S. exports $1.22 billion of the same products, which presumably will be retained in the U.S. Retaliation against such a move would leave the U.S. “short” of $1.45 billion of net imports per year.
Source: Panjiva
Panjiva’s seaborne data shows that the leading U.S. importers is likely to be ResMed. Shipments linked to the firm represented 34.9% of U.S. seaborne imports in the 12 months to Feb. 28 after a 33.1% rise in the first two months of 2019 versus a year earlier. At a smaller scale that was followed by Philips’ Respironics business whose shipments surged 37.5% higher, while Convatec saw a modest downturn of 1.9%.
Source: Panjiva
