Few American industries embody what a serious manufacturing policy should look like better than medical technology. While policymakers debate how to bring critical production home, medtech is already there. It supports nearly three million jobs across 17,000 facilities in all 50 states, generates more than $250 billion in annual economic output, and supplies roughly 70% of the domestic market with American-made products.
Since 2017, medtech companies have invested more than $300 billion in domestic manufacturing, including facilities and equipment. These are well-paying jobs — the average compensation tops $100,000 a year. The industry alone shipped nearly $80 billion in products abroad in 2024, more than autos, semiconductors, or natural gas, and runs trade surpluses with China, Japan, India, Brazil, and Canada.
This money goes directly back into channeling American innovation. The money medical technology companies bring in is funding the development of AI-enabled diagnostics that catch disease earlier, surgical robotics that make complex procedures safer, and even next-generation therapies that didn’t exist a decade ago.
A country that can build its own medical equipment is a country that can protect its own people, as we saw during COVID-19, when American manufacturers rapidly scaled up production of protective equipment, tests, and other essential medical supplies. More recently, when Hurricane Helene knocked a major IV-fluid plant offline in 2024, industry and government worked together to stabilize supply.
That is exactly why the push to bring even more production home should succeed and why it needs to be done with an understanding of how this industry actually works.
Every facility has its own regulatory process, a process that must take into account both FDA and international requirements. Moving production of an advanced imaging system or an implantable cardiac device means you have to requalify suppliers and ensure the product coming off the new line is just as safe as the old one.
For the most complex equipment, that process can take years, leading to higher costs and uncertainty in reshoring timelines. Even simpler reshoring can take time. Those rules exist because a flaw in a sterilization process or a substituted component can reach thousands of patients before anyone notices. Plus, sophisticated capital equipment and highly regulated implantables need longer runways.
Firm expectations paired with realistic schedules will get more production home, more safely, than abrupt deadlines that risk shortages in the very equipment hospitals can’t do without.
The United States already leads the world in medical technology. Plus, the technology we still import comes not from adversaries but from partners such as the European Union, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. Because China accounts for only about 3% of the American market, it gives policymakers room to be deliberate and creates a clear path forward for domestic capacity development. Additional Section 232 tariffs may therefore have a limited impact on reducing Chinese dependence while creating new costs and challenges for companies already investing in American manufacturing.
The task now is to extend America’s lead and make it last: to keep the R&D engine running, to build the next generation of factories here, and to ensure no American patient goes without a critical device during the transition.
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The solution is relatively simple. Policymakers should continue pursuing the administration’s goals while recognizing that medical technology requires a tailored approach. Lawmakers can instead take other important steps, including streamlining FDA review for manufacturers and prioritizing domestic facility inspections to set clearer timelines for companies willing and able to invest in America, while beginning the review of these products, which come from allies. This perfectly accompanies the Trump administration’s tariff policy: It rewards those who want to make and innovate here at home, and keeps the benefits away from those who don’t.
With this accomplished, the one-two punch of tariffs and making it easier for companies already innovating here will be a model for other similarly complex industries.
Ziven Havens Is a co-founder and fellow at the Bull Moose Project.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
