Sec. 1 Purpose
One key area of concern is the length of time it takes to build pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in the United States today. New construction must navigate myriad Federal, State, and local requirements ranging from building standards and zoning restrictions to environmental protocols that together diminish the certainty needed to generate investment for large manufacturing projects. For pharmaceutical manufacturing, these barriers are heightened by unannounced inspections of domestic manufacturers by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which are more frequent than such inspections at international facilities. Industry estimates suggest that building new manufacturing capacity for pharmaceuticals and critical inputs may take as long as 5 to 10 years, which is unacceptable from a national security standpoint. Even expanding existing capacity or modifying existing production lines to produce new or different products requires extensive permitting and regulatory approval, making it more difficult to repurpose existing underutilized pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity available domestically.
It is in the best interest of the Nation to eliminate regulatory barriers to the domestic production of the medicines Americans need. My Administration will work to make the United States the most competitive nation in the world for the manufacture of safe and effective pharmaceutical products.