Also made in Mexico: lifesaving medical devices

TIJUANA, Mexico — The North American Free Trade Agreement has transformed this sprawling border town from gritty party spot to something quite different: a world capital of medical devices.

Inside, Mexican workers churn out millions of medical devices each day, from intravenous bags to artificial respirators, for the global market.

When President Trump threatens to redo trade deals and slap steep taxes on imports in an effort to add more manufacturing jobs, he focuses largely on car companies and air-conditioner makers.

To ensure the safety of products that often end up inside the human body, medical devices are strictly regulated and require lengthy approvals from the Food and Drug Administration and other inspectors.

During that time, health executives say, a border tax could fracture the industry’s sophisticated global supply chain and force U.S. hospitals to pay more for vital necessities — or worse.

U.S. hospitals rely on heaps of bandages and surgical gloves from China, suturing needles and artificial joints from Ireland, and defibrillators and catheters from Mexico.

U.S. companies draft plans to build new plants — or expand existing ones — years in advance, said Miguel Felix Diaz, vice president of the Baja California Medical Device Cluster, an organization that represents 63 medical device manufacturing plants that employ 60,000 Mexican workers.

The final tally of just how much U.S. customers — hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and doctors’ offices — would pay is unclear.

The price on many medical devices is negotiated by group-purchasing organizations, which harness the purchasing power of hospitals and others and would try to mitigate price increases.

Mike Alkire, chief operating officer at Premier, which negotiates for some 3,750 U.S. hospitals, said that while prices would initially rise if the Trump administration hit countries like Mexico or China with tariffs, “we’ve got enough diversity in the way we source products, we think we can manage the costs.”

Mexico’s medical device industry buys much of its raw materials and capital machinery from U.S. suppliers.

The U.S.-owned Integer plant in Tijuana, for example, buys 90 percent of its raw materials, essentially duty-free, from the United States: stainless steel to be stamped into cups used for hip replacements and plastic to be molded into catheters.