At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. government turned to the Maryland company Emergent BioSolutions and its Baltimore plant to quickly produce massive amounts of vaccines.

The enormous task proved too much, and eventually a congressional inquiry found that a half-billion of the company’s vaccine doses were potentially contaminated and had to be ditched. Production was stopped by federal regulators in 2021 and the company left town last year.

Now the plant is poised to reclaim its position manufacturing some of the most advanced life-saving therapies and cures. The Indian company Syngene International, which bought the plant and all its technology in March, plans to restart production lines by year’s end.

“Coming to America makes a lot of sense because it’s where our customer base is,” Syngene CEO Peter Bains said in a recent interview at the Bayview plant. “We hope this foothold becomes a stronghold.”

The expected reopening comes as President Donald Trump has pushed companies to make more drugs in the United States, sometimes using tariffs on overseas imports to prod them to comply.

But Syngene had already made the decision to open its first U.S. plant in Baltimore months before Trump took office, eventually paying $36.5 million to Emergent for a facility that would have taken years and millions to build. It’s already been cleared to operate by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Like Emergent, Syngene is a contract manufacturer, available for hire by other companies to make their products.

Emergent made big business of government work, making the coronavirus vaccines and anthrax antidotes for the national stockpile. It still makes Narcan, the opioid overdose remedy, and other products.

Syngene has hundreds of clients, including big pharmaceutical makers, but Bains said it also expects to partner with local universities and startups.

The clients can also tap Syngene’s own scientists for research, perhaps a boon to Baltimore and the state, which have been seeking to keep homegrown companies in its emerging biomedical industry in town. As they grow and seek expertise and funding, they often leave for other, larger biotech centers.

Syngene was founded by an Indian brewmaster who was so struck by the fermentation process that she became a biotech entrepreneur. It’s now a large public company with more than 8,000 scientists and other employees, and a market capitalization of more than $3.3 billion.

Bains, Syngene’s CEO, said the company is versatile, able to produce small batches for human trials ahead of FDA approvals and larger ones for drugs ready for market. The lines produce doses in bulk, which are sent to other facilities for packaging.

Months after its purchase, it has just a handful of workers but plans to hire 300 as operations ramp up in coming months. They could come from federal agencies or local research universities where proposed or enacted cuts to hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health has left qualified employees looking for new work.

The most advanced pharmaceuticals, like cell and gene therapies, which Syngene can produce, are “the type of manufacturing we should prioritize,” said Jeromie Ballreich, a health economist and associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“These are advanced drugs, so we not only get the local economic benefit of these jobs in Baltimore, but startups and drug companies can use this Syngene plant as a resource,” Ballreich said.

The move, though, is not one that other drug manufacturers are likely to replicate, no matter how much Trump pressures them, he said.

Trump said he plans to impose a 25% tariff on all products from India, which would probably include pharmaceuticals. The U.S. importers that hired Syngene would have had to pay the cost.

India and China produce much of the world’s generic drugs, and many of the raw ingredients come from China.

Europe, particularly tax-friendly Ireland, supplies huge volumes of most brand-name pharmaceuticals, including the must advanced drugs. Trump recently imposed a 15% tariff on the European Union, with most drugs probably included.

Ballreich said the United States does have some drug manufacturing capability, but multinational drug makers won’t shift quickly.

There aren’t too many plants like Bayview sitting idle, he said. The facility is also located in an area with an abundance of qualified people and in easy reach of other East Coast clients. Normally, high-tech supplies are shipped overnight from overseas.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, drug makers’ main lobbying group, said in May that tariffs aren’t good policy.

“Tariffs are not the answer for promoting greater domestic production of these products,” the group said in response to an investigation into national security implications from drug imports. “On the contrary, every dollar collected in tariffs would be a dollar less that innovative biopharmaceutical companies are able to invest in U.S. R&D, manufacturing facilities and infrastructure.”

The result of tariffs could be billions in increased drug costs for importers, surely affecting consumers, said JP Krahel, a professor at Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business and Management.

Some people, he said, will not be equipped to pay much extra for their prescriptions.

Krahel added that even if Trump sticks with tariffs for his term, the next administration could reverse them, and no one will want to invest hundreds of millions in a new plant without certainty in the landscape.

“Baltimore is a great place for them to land,” Krahel said of Syngene. “But I don’t think this is kicking off a whirlwind of activity.”