For too long, Washington, D.C talked about “competition” with China while China treated biotechnology as a strategic battlefield. President Donald Trump is right to reject that complacency and to recognize that America’s technological dominance is something that must be a top priority.
As advisor to CEOs and author of a forthcoming book on China’s economic model Ram Charan recently argued in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. should stop treating China as a routine trade dispute and start approaching the country as though we’re at economic and technological war. China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to challenge American leadership in the biotech space.
Unfortunately, China is having some success.
The April 2025 report from the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warned that China has rapidly closed the innovation gap with the United States, surpassing America in the number of clinical trials and licensing of new drugs. A Hill source sent us a December update to the report that has even more alarming news, that China now sponsors more oncology trials than the U.S. and has made massive advancements in AI.
This is a national security threat. If China controls the prescription drug innovation sector it will have massive leverage over Americans as we need cancer treatments, vaccines, biologics, and next-generation therapies. Trump understands that surrendering that leadership to China would be dangerous.
That is one of the reasons why Trump’s economic policies are also pro-national security. The Working Families Tax Cut was pro-innovation, and it has already led to big GDP growth, and wages are now surpassing inflation, something that was very different than under the Biden years.
The results are real and we’re already seeing this. Just look at major companies like Amgen that lead globally. Amgen committed more than $2 billion in 2025 to U.S.-based manufacturing and R&D facilities from North Carolina to Ohio, while strengthening its oncology pipeline through acquisitions.
This is what winning looks like and it is good for every single American. It’s a combination of pro-American economic policies, regulatory certainty, and a president willing to say plainly that China is a threat, and that the United States intends to win.
President Trump and Republicans in Congress are right to stay focused. In biotech, strength is deterrence. And under President Trump’s leadership we are all better off.
