With a substantial multi-year investment in the offing, BD has joined a wave of healthcare companies upping their commitments to the U.S., this time focusing squarely on medical technology and the essential consumables used daily by doctors and patients.
Through its pledge, BD will invest $19 billion in the U.S. over the span of “several years,” with the outlay taking the form of capital, operational and supply chain investments, the company said in an Oct. 6 release. Of that sum, BD will channel $3 billion directly into the expansion of its manufacturing sites across the country.
As it stands, the firm boasts production sites in multiple U.S. states, including Nebraska, Connecticut, Texas, Georgia, Utah and South Carolina, as well as Puerto Rico. BD makes a large spread of devices and consumables for the healthcare industry, from endoscope systems and implantable meshes to catheters and syringes.
"This agreement reflects a shared commitment between the U.S. Government and BD to strengthening America's healthcare infrastructure, expanding U.S. manufacturing capacity and supporting reliable access to essential medical technologies, ultimately building a more resilient healthcare system for the future," said Tom Polen, BD’s CEO, in a statement.
With the upgrades slated to come online, BD now aims to expand its end-to-end manufacturing in the U.S. by some 5 billion essential medical consumables annually, which the company asserts could lift its share of locally supplied consumables to roughly 80%.
In a further commitment, the company said that it will crank out 100% of BD needs bound for use in the U.S. through domestic production using American-made steel.
As with the “most favored nation” deals struck by pharmaceutical companies in recent months, BD noted that its U.S. pledge provides relief from future Section 232 tariffs on its applicable products.
The company said this affords “greater long-term certainty for manufacturing and supply chain planning,” while giving a caveat that because final tariff rates, timing and product scope are not clear, the company is not yet quantifying the financial impact of its U.S. deal.
BD said it would offer additional information once the Section 232 tariffs are finalized.
"The administration recognizes the importance of investing in a stronger, more secure healthcare supply chain, and BD is uniquely positioned to help bring that vision to life through our scale, innovation expertise and longstanding U.S. manufacturing footprint,” added CEO Polen in his statement.
BD is among a multitude of healthcare companies to make large and public-facing U.S. manufacturing pledges since the Trump administration’s return to office.
On the biopharmaceutical front, 26 large and mid-sized drugmakers have now inked so-called “most favored nation deals” with the White House, formally swapping investment and drug pricing pledges for trade duty immunity on their medicines.
Meanwhile, German conglomerate Bayer on Friday announced its own $2.2 billion investment to erect a new high-tech manufacturing site in Ohio. The site, which is expected to create some 600 new full-time jobs once complete, will initially focus on manufacturing oncology, cardiovascular and renal products.
While the Bayer commitment aligns with the administration’s onshoring goals and comes at the right time to catch Donald Trump’s attention, the company’s U.S. president Sebastian Guth told Fierce that the move should be viewed as the culmination of Bayer’s increasing focus on the U.S. market, rather than an acute response to the policies of the now.