Tariffs
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla directly credited the threat of tariffs with leading to the deal, in which the company will offer drugs on a soon-to-be-launched website called TrumpRx.
Companies that have broken ground on or are actively constructing manufacturing facilities in the U.S. are exempted from the tariffs, according to President Donald Trump’s social media post on Thursday.
In an interview with German-language outlet Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said the company is exploring ways to remove or minimize the drug price gap between the U.S. and its other markets in similarly developed countries.
This manufacturing site in Richmond, Virginia, is the first of four projects that Eli Lilly plans to reveal this year as part of a $27 billion U.S. investment announced earlier this year.
President Donald Trump is considering tariff exemptions for certain “non-patented” pharmaceuticals, though the White House has yet to release specific guidelines.
There’s still much more to come from the White House on tariffs, but the European Union has now reached a trade agreement with the U.S.
President Donald Trump first threatened pharma tariffs in February and recently said they were imminent. Johnson & Johnson’s new investment adds to a $55 billion pledge made by the company in March.
A draft copy of an upcoming MAHA report reveals a strategy in lockstep with recent HHS actions such as reviving the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines; Viking Therapeutics reports robust efficacy from mid-stage oral obesity candidate but is tripped up by tolerability concerns; Novo Nordisk wins approval for Wegovy in MASH; and Lilly takes a pricing stand.
The Trump administration’s ever-changing tariffs and Most Favored Nation drug pricing are part of a blizzard of unclear, potentially illegal tactics that leave observers throwing their hands in the air.
As Trump has pressured drugmakers to lower the cost of medicines in the U.S., the pharma industry has coalesced behind a message of rebalancing what nations pay to better reflect the innovation and value of drugmaking.