Tariffs

Pascal Soriot’s comments came during AstraZeneca’s Q2 earnings call in regard to President Donald Trump’s newly announced European pharma tariffs. The company also announced estimate-beating earnings, with its cancer portfolio driving earnings despite clinical roadblocks.

While some analysts forecast the tariffs could mean billions in additional industry expenditure, others expect the overall impact to be “manageable.”

The money will focus on a manufacturing plant in Virginia that will make the company’s weight management and metabolic drugs like the hypertension drug baxdrostat and oral GLP-1 therapies.

The biotech is planning to expand antisense oligonucleotide capabilities and infrastructure on campuses that already produce drugs such as the ALS therapy Qalsody.

In its Q2 earnings call Thursday, Novartis said it is moving quickly to reshore its drug manufacturing operations, but CEO Vas Narasimhan told reporters that for most medicines, it typically takes three to four years to completely relocate production.

Leerink Partners called the announcement a ‘positive’ given the delayed timeframe and the uncertainty that the administration will implement tariffs at all.

Jefferies analysts called the proxy filing, which is a standard disclosure after a merger agreement, “much more intriguing than normal” given the regulatory turmoil it revealed.

While cancelled NIH grants and regulatory uncertainty are less hospitable to clinical research in the U.S., Europe must play its cards right to attract more studies.

In comments posted in response to the Trump administration’s pharma tariff investigation, companies and industry groups offered solutions to ease the impacts if the plan must go ahead.

In a letter to the Department of Commerce, Novo Nordisk argued that unsanctioned compounded semaglutide, mostly from China, constitutes a national security threat to the U.S.