The White House Office of Management and Budget is calling on pharma manufacturers to help it get a better feel for the United States’ capacity to manufacture generic medicines like ibuprofen, epinephrine and penicillin G.
The request is part of the administration’s initiative to move production of 86 critical medicines stateside in the next 18 months. According to the OMB, the ambition is a matter of national security meant to limit U.S. dependence on countries like China and eliminate supply chain vulnerabilities.
As part of its plan, the OMB is asking manufacturers with domestic or near-shore locations—like Mexico—to provide details on their available capacity to deliver finished doses, key starting materials (KSM), or active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) of the 86 essential medicines.
“Most essential medicine APIs are not made domestically, leaving the country vulnerable to foreign supply disruptions, especially from adversarial nations,” the office said in a Federal Register on Friday. “A majority of KSMs needed to produce generic medicines are not manufactured in the United States.”
In addition to the 86 target medicines, the OMB also asked for information on two additional antibiotics, amoxicillin and ciproflaxin, citing potential supply chain vulnerabilities. A June 2026 report from Council on Foreign Relations noted that China controls the raw or key starting material for 94% of amoxicillin.
The OMB said it plans to use any information shared to optimize existing capacity and better understand plans for new domestic capacity, and it will share responses with relevant agencies tasked with increasing domestic drug manufacturing.
To help with the market research, the office will “provide qualified respondents” with data on U.S. spending related to the essential medicines as well as a comprehensive list of the needed APIs and KSMs.
The FDA published an initial list of 200 essential medicines in 2020 which the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) later whittled down to 86. Many of the listed drugs, like amoxicillin, are almost exclusively produced by China.
This summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called a meeting of pharmaceutical leaders to lay out their plans for more domestic and near-shore drug manufacturing, starting with the ASPR’s list of 86, Stat first reported.
The push for more U.S.-made generics builds on the administration’s broader efforts to strengthen the domestic pharmaceutical industry. Major drugmakers announced more than $370 billion in U.S. investments in 2025 in response to mounting tariffs. Another nine pharma manufacturers signed “most-favored-nation” deals this month and collectively pledged $19.6 billion to U.S. manufacturing. And the U.S. Economic Development Administration invested 15.7 million in a fully domestic supply chain for sterile injectables.