President Donald Trump has taken bold action once again to protect our country. On August 13, 2025, he signed an executive order that will rebuild and refill the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve, or SAPIR. This may sound like a mouthful, but here’s what it means in simple terms: America is going to start producing more of its own medicine ingredients and keep them stored safely, just in case we ever face shortages or emergencies again.
Right now, most of the medicine we use in the United States is made with ingredients from other countries, especially China. While nearly 40 percent of finished drugs—the pills and medicines you pick up at the pharmacy—are made here in the U.S., only about 10 percent of the key ingredients that make those drugs work are made here. President Trump is saying, enough is enough. We cannot depend on countries like China for something as important as our medicine.
When President Trump first created the SAPIR program during his first term, the goal was to prepare America for medical emergencies by stockpiling the basic ingredients needed to make life-saving drugs. However, under the Biden administration, this reserve was left nearly empty. President Trump is now fixing that problem by ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to refill it quickly and with American-made ingredients when possible.
Here’s how it will work. First, the government will identify about 26 drugs that are considered critical to the health and safety of our people. Then, within four months, the SAPIR will be ready to start receiving and storing the ingredients needed to make those drugs. The goal is to have at least a six-month supply of these ingredients on hand, stored right here in the United States.
This isn’t just about health. It’s also about national security. When we rely on other nations—especially nations that don’t always have our best interests at heart—to supply our medicine, we are putting ourselves at risk. If China decided to cut off our supply of pharmaceutical ingredients, we could face a crisis. As Rosemary Gibson, author of “China RX,” has warned, our current system is “perfectly designed for catastrophic failure.” She’s right. And President Trump is doing something about it.
The executive order also calls for a second storage site to be built within a year. This means we won’t keep all our eggs in one basket. If one site is damaged or disrupted, the other can still function. That’s smart planning—something we haven’t seen in years.
President Trump isn’t stopping with just stockpiling. He also launched a Section 232 investigation to look into the national security risks of importing so many pharmaceutical products. And just days ago, he announced that new tariffs—taxes on imported medicines—could be coming soon. These could rise as high as 250 percent. That’s a strong message to companies: if you want to sell medicine in America, make it here.
The president’s plan is simple, but powerful. It puts America first. It puts our health first. And it makes sure that we are never again at the mercy of foreign countries when it comes to medicine.
This is more than just good policy—it’s common sense. Our Founding Fathers believed in independence. That means not just political freedom, but also the ability to provide for ourselves. President Trump’s action to refill SAPIR honors that tradition. It’s a return to self-reliance, to strength, and to putting the American people before global interests.
In the end, this executive order sends a clear message: America will no longer gamble with the health of its citizens. We will build, we will store, and we will protect. That is the American way. And under President Trump’s leadership, it is the way forward.
