America hits Chinese biotech—and its own drugmakers

AMERICAN HEALTH-CARE costs are sky-high; as treatments get pricier and the number of patients swells owing to an ageing population, they are getting higher. Chinese biotechnology is increasingly sophisticated and, as its companies gain scale, getting cheaper. A growing number of American drugmakers, from startups to big pharma, rely on firms like WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics, which conduct drug research on behalf of clients and manufacture compounds used in drugmaking. MGI Tech, a maker of gene-sequencing machines, is offering American hospitals kit that is cheaper to buy and half as expensive to run as American-made alternatives. A match made in heaven?

Not to America’s Congress. A bill currently before the Senate would forbid the federal government from buying health-care products from companies that do business with partners like the WuXi sister firms and MGI Tech. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is pushing for the BIOSECURE act, which would do much the same.