The following paper is based in part upon a workshop chaired by the author at the 6th Annual Generic Drug Summit (http://www.iirusa.com/genericsummit/). in Washington, DC, USA, on 28th September. The title of the workshop was ‘Strategic Sourcing in the generic drug industry in the US’. One of the objectives of the workshop was to examine the trend in the level of activity of API manufacturers in developing products for the US market and to discuss some basic principles that the sourcing manager can apply to make good business decisions sourcing APIs for the generic pharmaceutical company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]