Ron DeSantis says it’s time to ‘reshore’ medical supplies from China

On Monday morning, Gov. Ron DeSantis urged the United States to “reshore” supplies, his latest in a series of responses to shipping troubles.

“I think there’s a recognition that we need to reshore some of this stuff here in the United States,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Sumter County.

DeSantis preceded the recommendation with a blast across Beijing’s bow, saying current practice leaves Americans “at the whim of China.”

“And I think, if our country was smart, we would be looking and learning from what’s happened, particularly in recent times. You remember, when COVID hit, a lot of our medical supplies are created in China, they’re made in China and shipped here. Why would we want so many important things to us be at the whim of China on some of this stuff?”

The Governor made the comments during a press conference at the Gov. Rick Scott Industrial Park in Sumterville, where he was unveiling a job growth grant widening an access road from two to four lanes. But they were not even his first comments of the day on the supply crisis.

At an appearance earlier Monday morning, DeSantis teased a Sunshine State solution to problems with ships full of imports languishing outside the Port of Los Angeles and other Pacific berths with no timeframe to unload them.

“We’re going to be working on the supply chain,” DeSantis said in Brooksville. “You see these boats, these ships — they’re just sitting there off these coasts. The stuff’s not getting here.”

“You see these shortages developing. That’s not something that we’ve really experienced, certainly not in my adult lifetime that I can remember. And so you’re seeing all this stuff with the supply chain. What can Florida do to make sure these goods can come to market more efficiently? I think we may be able to do some things. So we’re going to do whatever we can. We’re probably going to have some announcements soon along these lines,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis has taken an anti-China position throughout his political career, a stance in line with the mainstream of the Florida Republican Party. In signing legislation intended to curb Chinese influence earlier this year, the Governor condemned China as holding a singularly “pervasive, nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions.”

The reference to COVID-19 in the Governor’s unsolicited blast of China, meanwhile, may not have been a coincidence. DeSantis does not discount the theory, once verboten, that the novel coronavirus was sprung on the world via a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

“The Communist Party of China decided to cover it up,” DeSantis said earlier this year. “They didn’t give any information out. They didn’t ask for any assistance. They didn’t give a heads up to anybody. They tried to cover it up.”