US tariffs on monkeys could drive America’s biomedical research laboratories abroad

The United States could lose its edge in developing treatments for illnesses ranging from Aids and the Ebola virus to malaria and Parkinson’s disease, due to the latest salvo in the escalating US-China trade war, according to a biotech trade group.

The Trump administration is set to add a 10 per cent tariff on September 1 on more than US$100 billion of Chinese imports, including clarinets, lacrosse sticks and vodka. One item is of particular concern to researchers: live primates – 80 per cent of the monkeys imported by America’s research laboratories are bred in China.

The new duty would erect a financial barrier that could force researchers, who are already facing difficulty in procuring live animals from abroad for testing, to reconsider their US operations, said Matthew R. Bailey, executive director of the National Association for Biomedical Research, a trade group. That would harm American interests in “extensive and wide-ranging” ways, he said.

“The increased tariffs will firstly cause a reduction in the number and scope of vitally important US-based research and development projects; and secondly trigger a migration of US R&D to China,” Bailey said in a June 17 letter to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in opposition of the tariffs.

“Instead of protecting and reinforcing US leadership in developing new drugs, treatments, and scientific breakthroughs, the proposed tariff will have the counterproductive effect of advancing the ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy for supplanting the United States as the world biotech leader.”

US President Donald Trump is using import tariffs on Chinese products as a blunt instrument to force Beijing to change years of trade and industrial policy, particularly as the world’s second-largest economy has come to dominate the global supply chain of everything from electronics, toys and clothing to even laboratory animals.