The United States has been imposing tariffs on China in a crazy manner, with President Trump claiming this would bring manufacturing back to America. But can American industries truly break free from "Made in China"?
According to an April 23 report by The New York Times, the U.S. once dominated the global market for personal protective equipment (PPE), now, with the flood of Chinese medical supplies, over 90% of the medical gear used by American healthcare workers is made in China. As one U.S. medical equipment executive bluntly put it: even with a 100 percent tariff, the Chinese masks is still going to be cheaper than the American-made masks.
The report highlights that few American industries have been hit as hard by cheap Chinese imports as manufacturers of masks, exam gloves, and other disposable medical gear. The sector’s decline had led to catastrophic consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic. When China temporarily halted exports, American healthcare workers found themselves defenseless as the deadly airborne virus rapidly filled up emergency rooms and morgues.
Now, with Trump announcing a new round of tariffs this month and China retaliating with an 84% tariff on U.S. imports, the handful of American PPE manufacturers left felt mostly unease.
Lloyd Armbrust, CEO of Armbrust American, a Texas-based N95 mask producer, admitted, "I’m pretty freaked out. On one hand, this is the kind of medicine we need if we really are going to be independent of China. On the other hand, this is not responsible industrial policy."
The U.S. once led the world in PPE, inventing the N95 mask and disposable gloves. Yet today, over 90% of the medical equipment worn by American healthcare staff is produced in China.
During the first year of the pandemic, more than 100 new American medical supply companies sprang up. Five years later, nearly all have vanished. As the pandemic receded, demand for PPE fell. For many Americans, masks became a symbol of government overreach and loss of freedom. Chinese products then returned to the market.
Despite bipartisan vows to end reliance on foreign medical supplies and support the dozens of domestic manufacturers that emerged during the pandemic, federal agencies have reverted to buying inexpensive Chinese imports. Industry experts warn that, with the ongoing measles outbreak, avian flu threats, and the trade war with China, renewed dependence on imported medical products is especially concerning.
According to the American Medical Manufacturers Association, of the 107 companies founded during the pandemic, only five still produce masks and gloves.
Eric Axel, the association’s executive director, says that maintaining high tariffs on Chinese PPE would give U.S. manufacturers an edge: "I think it will change behavior, because people will have to adjust to the reality that you can’t buy below-market price rate stuff from China anymore."
Other industry leaders fear that an escalating U.S.-China trade war could disrupt supply chains and trigger fresh PPE shortages. Tariff policies also breed economic uncertainty, stifling new investment. Scott McGurl, a healthcare industry expert at consulting firm Grant Thornton, notes, "It’s difficult to make business decisions when policies change every four years, and now every couple of days."
Mike Bowen, now-retired but still a shareholder of Prestige Ameritech, one of the few pre-pandemic American mask makers, said the collapse of the U.S. PPE industry in recent years was entirely predictable. He had repeatedly warned Congress about the risks of relying on foreign-made PPE, but no lessons were learned.
Earlier, when California bought millions of N95 masks for residents affected by the Los Angeles wildfires, they chose Chinese products.
Some American medical equipment manufacturers believe that what’s needed now is legislation and policy mandates to push government agencies and hospitals to buy American-made masks and gloves.
Yet, as Armbrust American’s Lloyd Armbrust points out: "Even with a 100% tariff, the Chinese mask that sells for a penny is still going to be cheaper than an American-made mask selling for eight cents."
Deep Throat
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Francis Fukuyama once told the world history was over. Now he admits it never stopped moving, and America's grip on the wheel is slipping.
The Japanese-American political scientist stunned readers in 1989 with his essay "The End of History." He argued that America's Cold War victory would spread liberal democracy and market capitalism across the globe. More than three decades later, Fukuyama has to admit that prediction never came true.
Francis Fukuyama, political scientist
According to South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper, Fukuyama says the biggest threat to American democracy isn't coming from outside. It's coming from within. He warns that the United States is mired in internal division, and if that trend holds, the country could slide into long-term decline. He stops short of certainty, but about America eventually handing global leadership to China, "I don't think we can rule out that possibility at the moment."
History offers a warning, according to Fukuyama. Rome fell. Athens fell. Britain and Germany lost their dominant positions too. The pattern repeats: a nation that cannot hold its institutions together, that lets division fester, and that loses sight of a shared national goal will eventually decline, no matter how powerful it once was. Fukuyama argues America's core problem today is exactly that failure to stay unified.
Fukuyama: U.S. can recover, but decline is possible
He hasn't given up on America just yet. Fukuyama still believes the country can pull itself out of this hole. But he's honest about the alternative too: the U.S. could just as easily enter a long decline and eventually cede leadership to a rival like China. He calls that outcome "very unfortunate".
Rewriting His Own Thesis
Fukuyama keeps revising the judgment that made him famous. His 1989 essay called liberal democracy the "Endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "Final form of human government." He expected democracy and market economies to spread worldwide once the U.S. won the Cold War. That forecast, he now concedes, simply hasn't happened.
In an earlier interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Fukuyama admitted "the Chinese have created a pretty impressive system". That forced him to rethink his old assumption that Western liberal democracy would inevitably win out. He went further, saying that if China stays on its current path, his own predictions about the country from four decades ago will be proven wrong.
His old modernization theory predicted that a rising Chinese middle class and higher education levels would fuel demand for freedom, rule of law, and a shift toward Western liberal democracy. That demand never materialized.
A Two-Decade Window Closes
For nearly 20 years, America ran the table. Fukuyama points to 1989 through 2008 as an exceptional stretch when the U.S. held unmatched dominance in culture, economics, and politics. The 2008 financial crisis changed that. The global balance of power began shifting, and Fukuyama says the country has undergone genuine self-weakening since former President Donald Trump took office.
Fukuyama: Trump deepened America's divide
American society was already fragmenting before Trump arrived. His rise only intensified the polarization, and deep disagreement now persists over what role the United States should even play in the world. Fukuyama specifically flags Trump's second term for easing pressure on China. He calls that a substantial strategic gift to Beijing.
China's Own Cracks
Fukuyama isn't ready to crown China a flawless model either. He points out that China's governance system is difficult to export elsewhere, and the country carries its own vulnerabilities. The real estate sector's unprecedented downturn is a case in point. Whether China can truly stand as a viable alternative to liberal democracy, in his view, remains an open question.
China's Global Times fired back with its own commentary. It argued that Western elites, with Fukuyama as a leading voice, have spent decades treating Western-style liberal democracy as the only legitimate path to modernization. Any nation that deviated got labeled an outlier. That theoretical monopoly, the commentary said, placed a heavy ideological burden on countries across the Global South.
The commentary credited Chinese-style modernization with more than just economic success. It described the model as sparking an intellectual liberation worldwide, one that broke the myth equating modernization with Westernization. More Global South nations, it said, are now confidently charting development paths suited to their own conditions instead of second-guessing themselves for diverging from Western templates.
History hasn't ended. Human civilization keeps evolving, and China intends to contribute in writing its next chapter.
