While the threat of tariffs dies down for the pharma industry, President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing a new investigation that could result in import taxes against U.S. trading partners that don’t pay enough for drugs.
President Donald Trump is preparing another salvo in his quest to force other nations to pay more for drugs, with a fresh probe that could bring new tariffs against U.S. trading partners, according to a report from The Financial Times.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the publication reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is preparing an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The goal is to investigate whether U.S. trading partners are paying enough for drugs.
If the investigation determines that they are not, the president could levy new tariffs on its partners. This would be a re-escalation of the trade drama that had begun to simmer down in recent weeks, after the U.K. and EU reached trade deals with the U.S.
The report also comes as multiple Big Pharmas inked deals with the White House regarding drug pricing, in turn shielding them from tariffs. Pfizer led the charge at the end of September via a White House press conference in which CEO Albert Bourla announced that some of the pharma’s drugs would be made available on a new platform called Trump Rx.
Bourla said the plan was reached in an effort to ease two big policy risks that had been hanging over the company: drug pricing and tariffs.
AstraZeneca followed Pfizer earlier this month with a White House deal while Amgen has agreed to list some products on TrumpRx as well.
Throughout Trump’s campaign to lower drug prices, pharmas and industry groups have pointed to other similar nations that they say are not paying their fair share for the innovation it takes to create new medicines. The president grabbed a hold of that narrative and has been speaking often about the disparate price of drugs like Ozempic.
In an oft-repeated story, he says that the drug is worth $130 in London and $1,300 in the U.S. Last week, after again talking about the price of Ozempic, Trump vowed to bring the price of weight loss drugs like Ozempic down to $150. The declaration sent both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s shares tumbling, even though Trump’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz stepped in to say that negotiations on the matter had not yet begun.
