China Is Making MAHA’s Favorite Drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will meet in July to discuss easing access to seven peptides, experimental drugs that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement have promoted as cure-alls for everything from injuries to aging. But these peptides are made predominantly in China, putting Kennedy on a collision course with anti-Beijing hawks in the Republican Party.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids naturally found in the body and some food. Some more well-known peptides include insulin and FDA-approved GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic. Others, including most of those under FDA review in July, are unapproved compounds that have nonetheless amassed a cult following among so-called looksmaxxers, bodybuilders, wellness influencers, and Silicon Valley biohackers. These include substances such as BPC-157 and KPV.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids naturally found in the body and some food. Some more well-known peptides include insulin and FDA-approved GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic. Others, including most of those under FDA review in July, are unapproved compounds that have nonetheless amassed a cult following among so-called looksmaxxers, bodybuilders, wellness influencers, and Silicon Valley biohackers. These include substances such as BPC-157 and KPV.

Kennedy and his MAHA allies claim that these peptides can help with concerns ranging from muscle gain to weight loss. But the FDA has previously warned that they pose safety risks and barred pharmacies from compounding many of them. In 2023 and 2024, the agency removed 19 peptides from a list of products that compounding pharmacies are allowed to produce, citing risks associated with ‌immunogenicity, ⁠toxicity, and impurity. Last year, two women were hospitalized in critical condition after being injected with peptides at a longevity conference in Las Vegas.

A smartphone is seen playing a video of a TikTok influencer hammering their cheekbone as part of the popular “looksmaxxing” trend in Los Angeles on April 11, 2025.Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

Now, seven of the 19 banned peptides might be deemed safe to compound, if the FDA moves to ease restrictions in July. Kennedy has vowed that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end” and railed against its “aggressive suppression” of peptides.

Peptide regulation will be the latest test of whether two key factions in President Donald Trump’s coalition—Kennedy’s medical populists and China hawks—can coexist when their priorities are moving in opposing directions. The fragile alliance has been shaky as of late, with members of the MAHA movement and Trump clashing over pesticide regulation and the surgeon general nomination. But administration officials still reportedly view the MAHA camp as integral in winning November’s midterm elections. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in May found that 41 percent of Americans supported the movement.

“MAHA advocates want peptides more accessible and deregulated, which would expand demand—largely met by Chinese suppliers. Congress wants decoupling” with Beijing, said Yanzhong Huang, a professor and director of global health studies at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. He described the two camps as “opposing forces [that] are likely to create policy incoherence.”

A worker inspects bioactive peptides at a workshop in Jingzhou, China, on Nov. 17, 2020.Huang Zhigang/VCG via Getty Images

Lawmakers warned that China seeks to dominate the entire supply chain—following a similar playbook seen in rare earths, semiconductors, and electric vehicles, stressing the need to boost domestic production. A U.S. Pharmacopeia analysis last year found that 41 percent of foundational chemicals used to make U.S.-approved drug ingredients—the building blocks from which APIs are synthesized—come exclusively from China. For nearly 680 APIs, accounting for 37 percent of those in the study, China is the sole supplier of at least one such ingredient.

China hawks called to crack down on the flow of core drug ingredients produced by unregulated Chinese entities. Sen. Tom Cotton in February urged the FDA to clamp down on “unsafe ingredients in our pharmaceutical supply chain” and described China’s access to the U.S. supply chain as posing “national security risks as well as significant health risks to American patients.” Many Republicans have alluded to China’s role in supplying fentanyl products to U.S. consumers as a justification for taking action against pharmaceutical imports from the country.

Imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China to the United States doubled in the first nine months of 2025, reaching $328 million, up from $164 million during the same period a year earlier, according to U.S. customs data cited by the New York Times. The flow of peptides occurs on two parallel tracks: those used for FDA-approved medication such as GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and what is known as “gray market” of unapproved peptides, said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The latter supply chain is called the gray market because unapproved peptides occupy a murky zone between legal and illegal commerce. They are marketed by online influencers and entities as treatments that affect the human body, which the FDA classifies as drugs. But because the FDA has not approved them, selling them for human use is illegal under U.S. law. Sellers sidestep these rules by labeling unapproved peptides as “for research only” and “not for human consumption.” Many of these peptides originate from factories in China and are shipped to a broad buyer base including distributors, beauty salons, and individual U.S. consumers who message sellers directly on WhatsApp.

An exchange on WhatsApp between the author and a sales representative for HTRA, a Chinese peptide manufacturer.

“We also have many customers in the United States, and our goods are always in normal transit,” said a sales representative for Chinese peptide manufacturer HTRA Peptides over WhatsApp, where I posed as an interested buyer. The sales representative identified herself as Bella. Many manufacturers like Bella advertise their products on social media platforms such as RedNote and TikTok, posting trays of vials set to pop music and using language borrowed from beauty influencer marketing, including so-called POV skits.

The Zhejiang-based company sells dozens of compounds—including KPV, which is marketed for muscle growth and anti-inflammatory effects and is one the seven peptides up for FDA review—and ships individual orders to consumers without a minimum spending requirement. In a seven-page long PDF catalog, Bella offered peptides often promoted by wellness influencers such as BPC-157 and TB-500, which go for $55 and $160 per 10 mg, respectively.

When asked whether there were risks about detection at the U.S. border, Bella was reassuring: “They are not usually detained,” she wrote.

In an undated photo, a sink can be seen full of various weight loss medications. Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Many Western drugmakers see little incentive to move away from Chinese suppliers, said Scott Kennedy (no relation to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), a senior advisor and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That feeling is mutual. China’s pharmaceutical industry also remains highly dependent on partnerships with global companies, he added: “That indispensability creates interdependence that should lead both sides to be extremely careful about weaponizing their respective advantages.”

Yet as MAHA acolytes and China hawks alike focus on the FDA’s upcoming peptide decision, China is quietly expanding its reach over the broader—and much more consequential—field of drug innovation, too. That’s particularly true when it comes to the global weight-loss drug market, which Wall Street analysts project will reach $150 billion within the next decade. Chinese and U.S. pharmaceutical companies are racing to claim their slice of the pie.

Western firms still dominate the weight-loss drug market, but the field is widening. Suzhou-based Innovent Biologics saw its obesity drug, Mazdutide, approved by Chinese regulators last year—and according to a 2025 report released by LEK Consulting, China has more than 60 obesity drug candidates under development that are set to compete with those produced in the United States. Chinese weight-loss drugs are significantly cheaper than their U.S. competitors. A month of Innovent Biologics’s Mazdutide retails for around $165, while a roughly equivalent dose of Eli Lilly’s Zepbound runs at $399.

While these drugs are injectable, the next frontier is making them oral, according to Yadav. In April, Eli Lilly’s Foundayo became the second oral GLP-1 weight-loss pill to gain U.S. approval, months after Denmark’s Novo Nordisk launched the first. China has its own candidate, IBI3032, in early-stage trials in the United States, while other Chinese drugs such as HDM1002 and ASC30 have shown weight-loss results in early studies.

Whichever way the FDA rules on peptides, China’s pharmaceutical heft is growing. The country’s industrial base can produce chemical compounds cheaply and more quickly than U.S. competitors. American consumers—and some members of the U.S. cabinet—are helping to fuel Beijing’s ascent.