While President Biden boasted during the State of the Union address about increasing American manufacturing, he has also allowed China to overtake the US as its primary supplier of rubber medical gloves. Furthermore, he has refused to complete the construction of a government-contracted factory started under former President Trump in rural southwest Virginia.
In the unlikely event that Beijing decided to halt deliveries, that plant alone would have guaranteed the country’s own supply of medical gloves and produced thousands of jobs.
In an exclusive interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday, Scott Maier, CEO of Blue Star NBR, the company hired to construct the factory, discussed Biden’s failure to provide the United States with medical gloves made in the United States and instead rely on China as the country’s main supplier, putting the nation at risk.
According to Maier, efforts to produce rubber medical gloves and other essential supplies domestically started under the Trump administration during the coronavirus pandemic, when the United States was short on personal protective equipment because the Obama administration had depleted its emergency stockpile and never refilled it.
At first, the Department of Defense (DOD) managed the contracts on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
During the pandemic in 2020, Maier’s company, Blue Star NBR, was paid to create a factory to make synthetic rubber for gloves and an adjacent factory to produce 20 billion gloves annually. This would have covered 17 percent of the U.S.’s annual needs of 120 billion rubber gloves, which are needed for everything from food preparation to doctor visits.
Modern, $123 million rubber plant finished construction in spring 2023, but because of inflation, rising energy and material costs, Maier required an additional $60 million to connect it to utilities and $170 million to construct the glove factory, which he never received funds for. The DOD informed Maier in May 2023 that the contract had expired and that he would need to get fresh financing or discover private sources.
While Maier said that the Biden HHS had informed him that they were cash-strapped, the Washington Post reports that the agency instead gave a new contract to a different business in September 2023 for the construction of an unfinished rubber factory in Louisiana that will begin production in around two years.
Meanwhile, the Post reports that American production accounts for just 2% of the rubber gloves required in the United States. The HHS said that it had increased the ability to make additional gloves, but only in terms of “infrastructure,” not real glove production.
Worse, according to an exclusive revelation by Breitbart News’ Boyle, China is quickly moving toward dominating the U.S. market for medical gloves, despite being the country that started the outbreak.
China now accounts for over 44% of our supply, up from roughly 14% at the end of the previous year. By the end of this year, they’ll have around two-thirds on their present trajectory, Maier informed Boyle.
To prevent this, Maier had to begin shuttering the facility last fall.
Furthermore, his business is not the only one in this predicament.
We’re only one illustration, Maier said. “Just with nitrile gloves, there are six other firms in the same situation that have invested close to $700 million and are 80 percent complete but aren’t generating anything.”
“There must be 50 or 60 additional corporations that have similar facilities that are probably 80 or 90 percent built but actually aren’t generating anything, if you look at the $17 billion that went out,” he continued. To ensure that we never find ourselves in a scenario where we are unable to obtain these essential products, “And again, we need to create the important items that we need here in the U.S. or at least have a percentage.”
According to Maier, the Biden administration ignored their appeals.
“The administration says, ‘We want the private sector to join in,’ when we speak with them. Regretfully, the private sector gets displaced when the government steps in and initiates a project of this nature. The private sector then examines the situation and remarks, “Well, it appears that the government has truly deserted you.” They’re not even purchasing the stuff that you’re putting out, nor are they providing you with funding to construct your facility.
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