Leerink Partners called the announcement a ‘positive’ given the delayed timeframe and the uncertainty that the administration will implement tariffs at all.
President Donald Trump provided a tariff update Tuesday, saying that imported pharmaceutical products could be subject to 200% levies, according to reporting from multiple outlets.
Speaking to reporters at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump also said that he would give the industry a grace period to adjust their supply chains. “We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half, to come in,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “We’ll give them a certain period of time to get their act together.
“After that they’re going to be tariffed if they have to bring pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs and other things, into the country,” Trump warned. “They’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200%.”
Writing to investors on Tuesday, analysts at Leerink Partners called Trump’s announcement a “positive” for biopharma, “because tariffs will not be implemented immediately… and it is unclear if the administration will follow through in the future.”
The S&P Biotech ETF was unmoved by the president’s discussion of tariffs, maintaining a price of about $85 through Tuesday.
Trump has been discussing pharma tariffs for months, with threats of these sector-specific levies starting just weeks into his second term. In a closed-door meeting in February, the President told several industry leaders—an audience that included Merck CEO Robert Davis and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla—that he would slap tariffs on their products if they continued to refuse to onshore their manufacturing.
Trump continued to escalate his threats, announcing in early April that he would place “major” tariffs on pharma imports. A few days later, Trump’s Department of Commerce announced that it had opened a Section 232 national security investigation into imported pharma products, including “finished drug products, medical countermeasures, critical inputs such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, and key starting materials, and derivative products of those items.”
In its note on Tuesday, Leerink indicated that the probe is still ongoing. “We are interested to see what it concludes regarding the effect of imports from countries such as Ireland and Switzerland on national security,” they wrote.
Companies have responded to these tariff threats by ramping up manufacturing investments in the U.S.. Sanofi, for instance, announced a $20 billion domestic package in May 2025, with the goal of adding “a significant number of high-paying jobs” in the country through 2030.
Other pharma powerhouses, including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Bristol Myers Squibb, have all announced U.S.-based investments.
