Noem under pressure to probe China's ties to major supplement store

Daily Mail​

10-07-2025

Donald Trump 's administration is facing calls to investigate China's ties to a supplement store present on dozens of U.S. military bases. Republican Rep. Pat Harrigan is demanding an investigation into GNC's claims that the vast majority of its products are made in the U.S.A. The North Carolina congressman alleges that nine out of 10 GNC ingredients are actually sourced from China, which is one of the top adversaries of the U.S. And he says this poses a major problem since Chinese-owned GNC is a major health supplement supplier on U.S. military bases.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary are facing pressure to get to the bottom of the discrepancies Harrigan is claiming. '[O]ur analysis reveals that nearly 90 percent of GNC's private-label ingredients are sourced from China, despite GNC's public claims that 96 percent of its products are U.S.-made,' Harrigan's letter to Noem and Makary reads, according to a copy obtained by the Daily Mail. 'GNC's record of compliance is deeply flawed,' the letter states. 'In 2016, it paid a $2.25 million fine to the DOJ over the sale of dietary supplements containing unapproved ingredients.'
Harrigan's request for another investigation is part of his continued efforts to get all General Nutrition Centers (GNC) stores kicked off U.S. military bases. There are approximately 85 GNC retail stores on U.S. military bases. While its Chinese ownership is not a secret, Harrigan is concerned that the company engaged in 'food fraud' by misrepresenting where its consumable products originated, he notes in his letter to Noem and Makary. A spokesperson for GNC told the Daily Mail that, like many other companies, the supplement store sources raw ingredients from around the world. He explained that once it arrives in the U.S., the ingredients go through a rigorous analysis and testing process before they are used to domestically produce consumables sold at GNC stores.
'GNC stands by the fact that over 96 percent of our branded supplements are made right here in the United States,' GNC Public Relations Director Nick Sero said. He told the Daily Mail: 'We've proudly invested more than $250 million into our domestic supply chain with major manufacturing partners across more than 10 states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, and California.' Sero also said that GNC leaders met with Harrigan in his office in May and explained the global sourcing of their ingredients but stressed the company's domestic quality testing. 'Every GNC-branded supplement is held to a rigorous 150-point quality and safety checklist, which includes testing of sourced ingredients for purity and potency, to ensure everything we offer meets our high standards,' Sero said.
'We welcome any conversation, whether with Congress, the FDA, or the public, about our products and our ongoing commitment to the U.S. military, our customers, and American manufacturing.' Besides the ingredients, Harrigan is also concerned about the potential threat the Chinese-owned company could pose to national security – especially when it comes to operations in military installations. The growing threat from China continues to be something that Congress and the Trump administration is monitoring. The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) says China has quietly seized control or influence over 37 major seaports across Latin America and the Caribbean and is using the cover network to ship and supply weapons.
It gives Beijing the power to spy on U.S. military activity, choke off vital shipping lanes, and even launch a surprise military strike on American soil. Meanwhile, a South Carolina port is being used by China to indiscreetly ship in products used in health supplements sold at GNC stores, according to an analysis referenced by Harrigan. The congressman and 12 of his House colleagues in April signed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding the Justice Department investigate whether GNC violated federal law by falsely stating in 2022 and 2023 that it had no parent company. In 2020, GNC was bought out of its bankruptcy and is now wholly owned by Harbin Pharmaceutical Group, a Chinese state-owned company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
It remains headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, despite its relatively new foreign ownership. In his new letter, Harrigan includes an enclosure of a risk analysis on GNC Holdings LLC from Exiger, a third-party risk assessment and supply chain risk management company. Exiger determined in the June report that HNC poses a medium-high overall risk to the U.S. It also found that the Chinese-state ownership of GNC poses an intelligence risk and exposes the personal data of U.S. military and personnel who purchase items at the stores in their bases to the CCP.
'This should have never been allowed to happen,' Harrigan told the Daily Mail. 'A Chinese state-owned company with this level of access to U.S. military bases is a direct threat to national security.' 'The idea that a CCP-run retailer imported nearly 100 million pounds of raw product from China, slapped a 'Made in the USA' label on it, and sold it to American troops behind the wire is outrageous,' the congressman lamented. His Military Installation Retail Security Act introduced earlier this year would ban any Chinese-owned retailers from operating on U.S. military installations and bases. Harrigan's new letter requests DHS and FDA criminally investigate GNC and the private-label manufacturers under the latter agency's Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), which grants authority to the FDA for oversight and regulation of food and drug safety.
The letter also notes that Harrigan wants an audit of GNC's ingredients to find where they are sourced from in order to conclude if the company made any false or misleading representations of the products' contents and countries of origin. 'Americans deserve transparency and safety in the products they consume—especially our service members,' Harrigan writes in the conclusion of his letter to the agency heads. 'No company with opaque foreign ownership, a pattern of fraud and unchecked access to military personnel should be permitted to continue unchecked.' Exiger's report of the national security risk assessment from GNC notes that since the CCP-takeover of GNC in 2020, the company has imported 4,341 ingredient shipments from China worth $500 million.
Still, GNC claims 96 percent of its products are 'Made in the USA.' Nick Sero told the Daily Mail in April that 'no GNC-branded product is manufactured in China.' He said the mere 4 percent of GNC products that aren't made in the U.S. are largely produced in the United Kingdom and Canada. 'None of our GNC-branded products are made in China, and our parent company does not have any influence on our products,' Sero assured. There are 85 GNC stores open on U.S. military bases, including 76 within Army and Air Force exchanges, nine within Marine Corps post exchanges and eight in Navy exchanges. None of them are subject to direct Department of Defense oversight, Harrigan laments.
A base or post exchange is a retail space that most closely resembles a department store but is only open to military members and their families as well as veterans or a select few with access to the military base. In 2019, GNC sold its private-label manufacturing operations to International Vitamin Corp. (IVC), which is known to source its ingredients and products from China, according to the Exiger report. The risk assessment group identified 4,925 U.S.-bound shipments to IVC and its manufacturing division Nutra Manufacturing Nutra. Its findings conclude that 88 percent of the shipments meant for GNC arrived from a port in China while the next highest country of origin was from South Korea with just 8 percent. Exiger claims that 3,122 of the China-origin shipments were unloaded in Charleston, South Carolina and addressed to Nutra/IVC facilities in either Greenville or Anderson, South Carolina where they have manufacturing plants.