Shelf of pharmaceutical products. <\/p>\n
D3sign | Moment | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Pharma firms are calling for clarity on tariffs imposed under the new U.S.-EU trade agreement, as analysts warn that punitive sector-specific levies could risk blowing up the entire deal.<\/p>\n
Ambiguity abounds around the terms for pharmaceutical goods under the trade truce agreed Sunday, which imposes 15% tariffs on EU goods<\/a>\u00a0imported to the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump announced a “straight across” tariff on “automobiles and everything else,” during a news briefing, while simultaneously suggesting that pharma was “unrelated to this deal.”<\/p>\n European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, dubbed the agreed levy as “all-inclusive,” and indicated that Europe would be excluded from a forthcoming announcement on pharma tariffs.<\/a><\/p>\n “We have 15% for pharmaceuticals. Whatever the decision later on is, of the president of the U.S., how to deal with pharmaceuticals in general globally, that’s on a different sheet of paper,” Von der Leyen said Sunday.<\/p>\n President Trump said earlier this month that a tariff announcement on pharmaceutical imports into the U.S. would come “very soon”<\/a> and could run as high as 200%. It comes after the administration launched a so-called Section 232 investigation<\/a> into the sector, which explores the impact of pharma imports on national security, with the outcome due by August.<\/p>\n Even if pharma tariffs were to come in at the lower 15% range, analysts suggest the hit to European firms and the bloc’s broader economy would be significant.<\/p>\n “The questions around pharma tariffs are highly material, given the volume of imports from the EU,” Wolfe Research analysts wrote in a note Monday.<\/p>\n Medicines and pharmaceutical products represent the EU’s largest export to the U.S., totaling around $120 billion in 2024.<\/a> Analysts estimate that 15% levies could ramp up industry costs by $13 billion to $19 billion per year, according<\/a> to Reuters.<\/p>\n If the rate were to come in higher, however, they say it could undermine the long-negotiated deal.<\/p>\n “Any surprise increases to the 15% ceiling on pharma tariffs would threaten the broader trade truce,” Eurasia Group analysts wrote in a Monday note.<\/p>\n “If any dispute about these sectoral tariffs does not sabotage the broader agreement,” the hit to the European economy could be severe, Rabobank analysts added.<\/p>\n In the meantime, firms are left struggling to navigate the uncertainty.<\/p>\n “We’ve been asking for exemptions from [tariffs] in the U.S., in the EU, but also in China. That’s something we have been pleading for,” Philips CEO Roy Jakobs\u00a0told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Tuesday.<\/p>\n “In the current deal that has been announced that was not part of it, so we keep having that dialogue.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shelf of pharmaceutical products. D3sign | Moment | Getty Images Pharma firms are calling for clarity on tariffs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[3085,2000,299,5187,5489],"class_list":{"0":"post-301065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-business-news","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-pharmaceuticals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114936282056081743","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}