The passage of the 'biosecurity law' proposed by the United States to sanction Chinese bio companies has failed to materialize this year.
According to the Korea Bio Association and the U.S. political media Politico on the 19th, the biosecurity bill that the U.S. Congress was pushing for has not been included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) or the continuing resolution, making its passage this year impossible.
The biosecurity law prohibits the U.S. government or corporations receiving government funding from engaging in transactions with Chinese bio corporations. Although its passage was anticipated due to the support from both the Republican and Democratic parties, it faced opposition from key lawmakers including Representative Jim McGovern (Massachusetts) and Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky).
Major corporations designated as targets of regulation under the bill, including WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, and Complete Genomics, actively lobbied to block the passage of the biosecurity bill, leading to its current situation.
There are forecasts that the U.S. Congress will engage in a prolonged battle over the biosecurity law next year. However, some predict that its passage will not be easy.
U.S. media analyzed that even if the legislative process is resumed next year, it will be inevitable to amend the provisions regarding the designation and release procedures for the corporations that were controversial in the bill. Additionally, Rand Paul, who opposed this law, has been newly appointed as the chairperson of the committee (Homeland Security Committee), making the legislative process expected to be a challenging journey.
With the failure of the biosecurity bill to pass this year, China has avoided the crisis of being expelled from the U.S. market.
WuXi Biologics resumed construction of its biopharmaceutical production plant, which had been halted due to the impact of the biosecurity law, last week. WuXi Biologics is building a biopharmaceutical production plant worth $300 million in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2020, it bought the site for the biopharmaceutical production plant with $6 million in tax credits from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and $11.5 million in tax reductions from the city of Worcester.
WuXi Biologics announced at the beginning of January last year that it would expand the plant from the originally planned 24,000 liters to 36,000 liters by adding 12,000 liters to meet the increasing demand in the United States. However, when the momentum for the passage of the biosecurity bill picked up in May of this year, the company temporarily halted construction of the plant in June, and as signs indicated the bill would fail to pass, it resumed construction.
For corporations that had been eyeing the vacancies left by Chinese companies, this situation is disappointing. As the biosecurity law was proposed and discussions gained momentum, the market anticipated that major contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO), including Swiss Lonza, South Korea's Samsung Biologics, and Japan's Fujifilm Diosynth, could benefit.