China’s Multibillion-Dollar US Pharma Pipeline Draws Scrutiny in Washington

The Trump administration has reportedly contemplated a significant crackdown on medical treatments imported from China.

At the heart of the deliberations, the New York Times reported Wednesday, is an already-drafted executive order that would target the crucial pipeline of experimental treatments being developed in the Middle Kingdom, where US pharma giants have increasingly pledged to invest tens of billions of dollars to license drugs in lieu of deals with American biotechs. The White House said it is not “actively considering” the order, but the issue is very much front of mind for investors and industry.

Reforms Set to Light Speed

China’s pharmaceutical sector, a minor player just years ago, revved up into a global juggernaut faster than a Fuxing high-speed train. It started with the country overhauling its drug regulator in the 2010s to more closely align with the US Food and Drug Administration, bringing the requirements that drug manufacturers must meet on both sides of the Pacific closer together and making it easier to develop treatments for export to the US and EU. Then, an advanced transformation began in 2015, when Beijing launched a $300 billion decade-long Made in China industrial policy that targeted sectors including biopharmaceuticals for rapid expansion.

As with its rising AI prowess and growing military, China’s subsequent pharmaceutical advances have led to concerns that it is catching up to the US. In April, an independent commission warned Washington lawmakers in its final report that China has already lapped the US in some areas of biotechnology and the life sciences. The fact that developing drugs in China is cheaper and, with regulatory changes, is becoming faster, has made it a juggernaut hub for research and investment: 

• Jefferies analysts estimate that roughly a third of all global pharmaceutical licensing spending in the first half of 2025, or $52 billion, involved Chinese drugs. In both 2023 and 2024, China represented 21% of licensing spending and, in years before that, only single digits.
• The money has poured in along with handshakes: Jefferies said Chinese biopharmaceutical firms struck 125 business-development deals with external partners last year, almost doubling the 65 in 2020. Notable this year has been a surge in agreements to license cancer treatments.

Tug of War: The Times reported that figures including billionaire investor Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have lobbied the Trump administration to consider restricting Chinese biotechnology over fears their own hard-to-sell positions in US companies are under duress. Major drugmakers, which have partnered with Chinese companies over US firms, have been advocating against the measures, the paper said. A research paper published in the scientific journal Nature last week found that 11 pharma giants, among them AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and GSK, have together pledged roughly $150 billion to license novel treatments from China in the last five years.