TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated his pledge to substantially cut drug prices as the deadline he set for pharmaceutical companies to lower prices looms.
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Trump said he would slash drug prices by 1,400% to 1,500%. "Going to do a number on costs of drugs in US," he said during the briefing. The remarks reaffirmed his aggressive stance on pharmaceutical pricing and higher sectoral tariffs.
Trump two weeks ago has made one of his boldest claims in his promise to reduce drug prices. “You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400, 1,500%,” he told reporters on August 10. He noted the reductions will start over the next two to three months. “I don’t mean 50%. I mean 14- 1,500%,” he said.
The White House in late July said Trump had sent letters to 17 major pharmaceutical firms in the West outlining the steps they must take to lower the price of U.S. preion drugs to “most favored nation” (MFN) levels by September 29.
Companies to receive these letters include AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Roche’s subsidiary Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron and Sanofi. Trump in the letter warned if these companies “refuse to step up,” the U.S. government will deploy every tool in its “arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,” without specifying the possible measures.
The Trump administration has intensified the threat of tariffs on pharmaceutical imports since it in April opened a so-called Section 232 investigation into how importing certain pharmaceutical products affects national security. The move was widely seen as a prelude to initiating tariffs on drugs.
Trump during a Cabinet meeting on July 8 disclosed steep tariffs on the pharmaceutical sector will be announced “very soon”, while he could offer the pharmaceutical manufacturers at least a year for transition of their production to the U.S. before implementing the tariffs up to 200%.
"We’re going to give people about a year, year and a half to come in, and after that they're going to be tariffed," Trump said in the meeting. "If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, … they're going to be tariffed at a very high rate — like 200%."
Trump a week later said he could impose impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals by August 1 and that levies on semiconductors could come soon as well. “Probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff,” Trump said on July 15.
Trump earlier this month suggested he would impose even more hefty tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. "We'll be putting a initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals, but in one year — one and a half years, maximum — it's going to go to 150%. And then it’s going to go to 250%, because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country," Trump said in the CNBC interview on August 5.
