A current guide for importers ahead of the September 29 deadline. We keep every client quote updated as tariff rules change.
Read the full story at Carra Globe ↗
An explainer on what changed after the July 31 deadline. Tariff dates now drive shipping schedules across healthcare.
Read the full story at Pharmaceutical Commerce ↗
Healthcare logistics is growing fast, led by cold-chain drugs. Capacity built for pharma also supports the medical disposables that ship alongside.
Read the full story at CNBC ↗
A mid-year look at North American freight capacity and rates. Domestic trucking costs are part of every landed-cost quote we build.
Read the full story at C.H. Robinson ↗
A practical guide for importers facing new Section 232 duties. The compliance steps apply well beyond pharmaceuticals.
Read the full story at McDermott Will & Emery ↗
Proposed duties on medical supplies would hit hospitals directly. Country of origin and HTS classification matter more than ever.
Read the full story at Becker's Hospital Review ↗
A weekly roundup of logistics developments. We share it for readers who want a broader view of the freight market.
Read the full story at Logistics Viewpoints ↗
The medical supply investigation was back in the news. Buyers want sourcing plans that work under more than one tariff outcome.
Read the full story at MedTech Dive ↗
Supply chain roles in healthcare are shifting from purchasing to risk management. Supplier diversity and visibility are now core skills.
Read the full story at Becker's ASC ↗
A year-end roundup of freight, port and trade developments. Useful context heading into Lunar New Year production planning.
Read the full story at Imperative Logistics ↗
Academic medical centers described budgeting around shifting tariff rules. Fixed landed-cost quotes help buyers plan through that uncertainty.
Read the full story at AAMC ↗
Hospitals now have a central reference on tariffs affecting their purchases. It is a good starting point for procurement teams.
Read the full story at American Hospital Association ↗
A 100% tariff on branded drugs signaled how far trade policy could reach into healthcare. Importers of all medical goods took note.
Read the full story at Foley Hoag LLP ↗
Nearly a year after Helene, IV saline was off the shortage list. Recovery took far longer than the disruption itself.
Read the full story at American Hospital Association ↗
Drug makers reworked sourcing to manage tariff risk. The same review is happening across medical and safety disposables.
Read the full story at Pharmaceutical Technology ↗
A national security review of imported medical supplies, PPE included, raised the prospect of new duties. We track it for every product we source.
Read the full story at White & Case LLP ↗
A 90-day pause opened a window to move goods at lower rates. Importers who had orders ready used it.
Read the full story at Al Jazeera ↗
Broad reciprocal tariffs applied to nearly every trading partner. Country-by-country rates made factory location a pricing decision.
Read the full story at CSIS ↗
A useful primer on where tariffs hit hardest in healthcare. Disposables with thin margins feel duty increases first.
Read the full story at Forbes ↗
New duties on China, Canada and Mexico touched a wide range of medical supplies. Tariff classification became a line item every buyer had to understand.
Read the full story at STAT News ↗
The Los Angeles fires disrupted trucking and warehousing near the ports. Cleanup crews and responders also created demand for disposable coveralls and respirators.
Read the full story at Supply Chain Dive ↗
New tariffs were expected on imports from China and beyond. Buyers started reviewing country of origin on every product line.
Read the full story at MD+DI (MDDI Online) ↗
Hospitals rationed IV fluids for months after Helene. Conservation is a stopgap; a second qualified supplier is the long-term answer.
Read the full story at KFF Health News ↗
The first coast-wide port strike in nearly 50 years halted East and Gulf Coast cargo. Our West Coast routing through Long Beach was unaffected.
Read the full story at CNBC ↗
Flooding shut the plant that makes most of the country's IV fluid. It was another single-site failure with national consequences.
Read the full story at American Hospital Association ↗
Talks broke down ahead of the September contract deadline. Shippers began moving cargo to the West Coast as a hedge.
Read the full story at Seatrade Maritime ↗
A faulty software update knocked out systems at hospitals, airlines and logistics firms. Paper backups and manual processes still matter.
Read the full story at American Hospital Association ↗
The UN trade agency flagged Suez, Panama and geopolitics as ongoing cost drivers. Volatility is now the normal state of ocean freight.
Read the full story at UNCTAD ↗
Rain restored canal capacity after a year of limits. All-water routes to the East Coast became an option again.
Read the full story at John S. Connor ↗
Cargo diverted to other East Coast ports for weeks. Having a second port of entry in the plan kept shipments moving.
Read the full story at SupplyChainBrain ↗
The Key Bridge collapse closed one of the busiest East Coast ports. Our thoughts are with the families of the workers lost.
Read the full story at PBS NewsHour ↗
A clear summary of how rerouting spread costs across global trade lanes. The knock-on effect was a shortage of ships and containers in Asia.
Read the full story at NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade ↗
The largest carriers suspended Red Sea transits indefinitely. Buyers with flexible routing and early bookings avoided the worst delays.
Read the full story at CNN Business ↗
Freight rates jumped again as ships avoided Suez. Transpacific lanes to the U.S. West Coast were less affected, which helped Asian imports into California.
Read the full story at CNBC ↗
Attacks on ships near Yemen pushed carriers around the Cape of Good Hope. Asia-to-Europe transit times grew by one to two weeks.
Read the full story at Seatrade Maritime ↗
Carriers passed canal costs to shippers through new surcharges. A complete landed-cost quote shows these fees up front.
Read the full story at Supply Chain Dive ↗
Complex devices were moving closer to home. High-volume disposables like coveralls and gowns still make the most sense from Asian factories built for them.
Read the full story at Xometry (Investor News) ↗
Tighter limits meant lighter loads and more surcharges. West Coast ports became the more reliable entry point for transpacific cargo.
Read the full story at gCaptain ↗
A large share of medical products carried tariff exposure to China. Sourcing from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia or South Korea is one way to manage it.
Read the full story at MD+DI (MDDI Online) ↗
Drought cut the number and draft of ships that could transit the canal. East Coast buyers of Asian goods felt it in longer and costlier routes.
Read the full story at World Weather Attribution ↗
The emergency formally ended on May 11. PPE buying returned to normal procurement cycles, which favors suppliers with consistent quality and pricing.
Read the full story at CDC ↗
Researchers kept documenting structural weaknesses in PPE supply. Most of the fixes involve diversified sourcing and better demand planning.
Read the full story at CIDRAP (Univ. of Minnesota) ↗
The end of the emergency also ended many emergency authorizations. Products sold under those authorizations need full clearance to stay on the market.
Read the full story at TIME ↗
The derailment put hazmat response and chemical protective clothing in the headlines. Responders and cleanup crews go through disposable suits and coveralls quickly on sites like this.
Read the full story at U.S. Fire Administration (FEMA) ↗
China's reopening came with a wave of worker illness. Factory visits and audits resumed, and in-person verification returned to sourcing.
Read the full story at Marketplace (APM) ↗
Three respiratory viruses at once strained pediatric supplies. Hospitals leaned again on PPE reserves built since 2020.
Read the full story at Forbes ↗
An early flu season pushed pharmacies to their limits. Seasonal demand is predictable, and supply plans should be built around it.
Read the full story at WFTV ↗
A demand surge met thin inventories and few manufacturers. Shortages rarely have one cause; they happen where several small weaknesses line up.
Read the full story at Texas A&M Stories ↗
Low-margin products attract few suppliers, which makes them fragile. The same economics apply to many disposable medical supplies.
Read the full story at Brookings Institution ↗
Glove prices kept sliding as pandemic capacity came online. It was a good time for distributors to renegotiate supply programs.
Read the full story at Moomoo ↗
Federal planners moved to rebuild PPE reserves and support domestic production. Private buyers need their own stocking plans too.
Read the full story at EMS1 ↗
Ocean rates began falling from their pandemic peaks. Lower freight made imported PPE competitive again for buyers who had shifted to domestic supply.
Read the full story at The Maritime Executive ↗
A single Shanghai plant's shutdown cut U.S. supply of CT contrast dye. Single-source medical supplies remain one of the biggest hidden risks in healthcare.
Read the full story at Washington Post ↗
Shanghai's lockdown froze trucking to the world's busiest container port. Factories with access to Ningbo and other ports kept shipping.
Read the full story at CNN Business ↗
The formula shortage showed what happens when a few plants supply a whole category. The fix involved imports from qualified foreign producers, a pattern we saw first with PPE.
Read the full story at U.S. FDA ↗
Lunar New Year closures plus Olympic restrictions stretched factory downtime. We plan production around the holiday every year so orders ship before or well after it.
Read the full story at WWD / Sourcing Journal ↗
Resale markups followed the test shortage, just as they had with masks in 2020. Buying from the source is the best protection against gray-market pricing.
Read the full story at CNN Business ↗
Omicron emptied pharmacy shelves of home tests. Each new wave showed which products had real depth in the supply chain and which did not.
Read the full story at Washington Post ↗
One year after the glove shortage, the market swung to oversupply. PPE pricing is cyclical, and long-term buyers can lock in terms at the bottom.
Read the full story at Focus Malaysia ↗
Congestion, container costs and labor shortages stacked on top of each other going into peak season. Holiday-season buyers learned to order a quarter earlier.
Read the full story at CNBC ↗
The chip shortage reached medical devices. The lesson applies to every product: map your supplier's suppliers before a shortage does it for you.
Read the full story at AdvaMed ↗
Ships anchored for weeks off Long Beach and Los Angeles. Booking early and routing some cargo to alternate ports kept orders moving.
Read the full story at Bloomberg ↗
New domestic mask makers struggled to compete once imports returned. Reshoring works best paired with a steady buyer commitment, not just emergency demand.
Read the full story at Bloomberg ↗
A handful of producers controlled most global glove output, so buyers had little leverage. Diversifying across countries restores some of it.
Read the full story at Quartz ↗
Empty containers piled up in the wrong ports while Asian exporters waited for boxes. Container rates from China to the West Coast reached records.
Read the full story at South China Morning Post ↗
Long-term care facilities paid some of the steepest markups on gowns and gloves. Fixed-price supply agreements protect buyers when spot markets spike.
Read the full story at McKnight's Long-Term Care News ↗
One grounded ship held up hundreds of vessels for nearly a week. Transit-time buffers in a sourcing plan are not padding; they are the plan.
Read the full story at CNBC ↗
The Texas freeze shut down petrochemical plants that make polypropylene resin, the raw material for non-woven fabric. Resin prices climbed for months afterward.
Read the full story at Texas Tribune ↗
Large systems with purchasing power recovered first while smaller buyers waited. Direct sourcing programs are how mid-size distributors close that gap.
Read the full story at Supply Chain Dive ↗
Vaccine distribution put cold chain logistics at the center of public health. It also pulled freight capacity and attention away from everyday medical supplies.
Read the full story at FreightWaves ↗
Malaysia makes most of the world's medical gloves, and demand far outpaced its lines. Concentrated supply means one country's disruption becomes everyone's shortage.
Read the full story at TIME ↗
PPE fraud followed the shortages. Our rule has not changed since: inspect before the balance is paid, and never wire money to a seller whose factory you have not verified.
Read the full story at DOJ / FBI (EDNY) ↗
Six months in, N95 supply was still short. Domestic capacity takes years to build, so imports from qualified factories remained part of the answer.
Read the full story at Washington Post ↗
A plain-language look at how KN95 filtration works and how it differs from an N95. Knowing the standard behind a product is the first step in buying it correctly.
Read the full story at Rolling Stone ↗
Freight volumes swung hard in both directions through the spring. Domestic trucking capacity is the last mile of every import, and it tightened fast once demand came back.
Read the full story at SupplyChain247 ↗
After masks, isolation gowns became the item hospitals could not find. The bottleneck was SMS fabric, which is why we track non-woven roll goods as closely as finished garments.
Read the full story at Medscape ↗
Dozens of manufacturers came off the FDA's authorized list after testing showed poor filtration. Certificates alone were not enough; independent test reports became the standard we hold every factory to.
Read the full story at Mintz ↗
Governments, hospital systems and brokers bid against each other for the same factory output. Verified factory relationships mattered more than price in those weeks.
Read the full story at New York Times ↗
With passenger flights grounded and PPE demand spiking, air freight rates multiplied. Buyers who could plan for ocean freight paid a fraction of what emergency air shipments cost.
Read the full story at Transport Topics ↗
Extended Lunar New Year closures showed how much of the world's supply rides on a single region. It is the strongest argument yet for qualifying a second source in another country.
Read the full story at NPR ↗
The truce eased tension but left most Section 301 duties on Chinese goods in place. For importers, landed-cost planning still has to start with the tariff line, not the factory price.
Read the full story at NPR ↗Start with a sample
Mail or photograph your current coverall, gown or cover, tell us your monthly usage, and we will come back with factory options and a landed-cost quote.