The Trump Administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda recognizes a simple truth: the best way to improve our health is to empower people to understand and help manage their own care. Affordable medical devices make that possible.
Every day, Americans use this technology to check their blood pressure, track sleep, monitor heart rhythms, manage hearing loss, and more. These devices bring care into our homes, extend the reach of doctors, and help millions of people stay healthy without setting foot in a clinic. For some of us, that makes care more convenient. For others – including Americans living in rural areas, people with mobility issues, or parents who lack childcare – it can be the difference between getting care or leaving health issues undiagnosed or untreated.
That’s why it’s so important that we keep these products affordable and available. The Administration’s just-launched ‘Section 232’ investigation into medical devices, which allows the government to impose tariffs or trade limits on imported products that could threaten national security – could have the opposite effect. Tariffs on medical devices, which could layer on top of already-imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, country-specific tariffs and more, make essential health tools like diagnostic imaging equipment, wearable health monitors, and hearing aids more expensive, at a time when Americans are already concerned about costs. Putting medical devices further out of reach for low- and middle-income households makes us less healthy and less secure.
New tariffs also threaten to slam the breaks on health innovation that makes Americans’ lives better. Breakthroughs in health, powered by a surge of innovation in artificial intelligence, rely on global supply chains and collaboration with trusted partners. At the same time, uncertainty around new tariffs makes it harder for American businesses to invest in new research and new products, risking American leadership in the rapidly growing health tech industry. Nobody benefits when businesses – especially dynamic small businesses and startups – have to divert money from research into red tape and legal compliance.
That’s not what the Administration wants or what consumers are asking for. In 2024, more than 16 million connected health monitoring devices shipped in the U.S., and digital health services grew by double digits. These tools are helping people of all ages — especially younger and lower-income Americans — take charge of their health. Innovation in this space is fast and constant, and we should be doing everything possible to keep it going.
Ultimately, our trade policy should focus on making healthcare better, not more expensive. A healthier America is a stronger and more secure America. That means targeting true national security threats. It also means recognizing that technologies that make Americans healthier and more independent also make us stronger, especially because most medical device imports come from U.S. allies and trusted trade partners in Europe and North America. Imports fill critical gaps, giving American health care providers access to more than two million regulated technologies that American manufacturers couldn’t produce alone.
By keeping consumer medical devices free from new tariffs and strengthening partnerships with our allies, we can grow the health tech sector, create jobs for Americans, and give everyone the tools to support longer, healthier lives.
Access to affordable health technology is not just an economic issue. It’s a public health imperative. If we want to make America healthy again, that starts with keeping medical devices affordable.
About Kinsey Fabrizio
Kinsey Fabrizio is president of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, which represents more than 1300 consumer technology companies and owns and produces CES® — the most powerful tech event in the world. In this role, Fabrizio sits on CTA’s Executive Board and drives strategy and growth for CES and CTA, leading the CES, Membership, Conferences and Marketing and Communications departments.
Since joining the association in 2008, Fabrizio has played a pivotal role in transforming CTA and CES. Most recently, as senior vice president since 2022, she managed all things CES, leading a dramatic expansion of CES sales and overseeing international media events, conferences and show operations.
