{"id":258708,"date":"2025-09-27T12:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/258708\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T12:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:28:13","slug":"5-questions-experts-have-about-trumps-pharma-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/258708\/","title":{"rendered":"5 questions experts have about Trump’s pharma tariffs\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

For people who rely on certain prescription drugs, including weight loss, asthma and cancer medications, President Donald Trump\u2019s post announcing 100% tariffs on foreign brand-name drugs<\/a> offers little clarity on when \u2014 or if \u2014 medications might see price hikes. <\/p>\n

\u201cStarting October 1st, 2025, we will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America,\u201d Trump said on Truth Social<\/a> late Thursday. \u201c\u2018IS BUILDING\u2019 will be defined as, \u2018breaking ground\u2019 and\/or \u2018under construction.\u2019 There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts say Trump\u2019s post raises a lot of questions. Here are five major ones. <\/p>\n

What drugs will be impacted?<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s post doesn\u2019t specify whether brand-name drugmakers with an existing U.S. plant would be exempt, whether that exemption would include all their products, or whether it would only be for the drugs manufactured at the U.S. site. <\/p>\n

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, makers of the weight loss drugs Wegovy and Zepound<\/a>, respectively, have announced plans to invest in U.S. manufacturing. But it\u2019s unclear if their intent to invest will warrant an exemption. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Lilly announced plans for a $6.5 billion manufacturing facility in Houston<\/a> that will produce Zepbound and its other GLP-1 drug, Mounjaro, following a recent commitment to build a $5 billion plant near Richmond, Virginia. Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, said in June it would spend $4.1 billion to construct a second GLP-1 fill-finish plant in Clayton, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

AstraZeneca, which makes the asthma drug Symbicort, also announced in July that it will invest $50 billion over the next five years<\/a> to expand its research and development and manufacturing footprint in the U.S. <\/p>\n

Many other popular brand-name drugs, however, are primarily manufactured overseas, particularly in Europe, said Rena Conti, an associate professor at Boston University\u2019s Questrom School of Business.<\/p>\n

Botox, made by Allergen, and the cancer drug Keytruda from drugmaker Merck are made in Ireland. (Keytruda\u2019s manufacturing has increasingly moved to the United States in recent years, but it\u2019s not clear if that would earn an exemption from Trump\u2019s tariffs.)<\/p>\n

Others, including some for blood and lung cancers, as well as vaccines, are made in places like India and China, Conti said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s most at risk here are branded products that come from China and India,\u201d she said. The E.U. and Japan already have trade agreements in place that cover pharmaceuticals<\/a>, she added, and it\u2019s unclear whether the new tariff will supersede that. <\/p>\n

Will patients see prices increase?<\/p>\n

Only 1 in 10 of the prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for brand-name drugs; the vast majority are for generics,<\/a> which are much cheaper and will not be affected by these tariffs. <\/p>\n

Whether patients see price increases will depend on how many drugmakers receive exemptions \u2014 and on whether companies choose to pass those costs on to patients at the pharmacy counter, said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, tariffs are taxes on patients,\u201d Kesselheim said, \u201cand to the extent that drug companies see increases in cost due to tariffs, they will pass those costs on to patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some companies may decide not to pass the costs along. So far, the 15% tariffs on imports from the E.U. haven\u2019t translated into big price hikes for U.S. patients, Conti noted. To be sure, a 100% tariff would be far more costly<\/a> for a company. <\/p>\n

Price hikes may not start right away, as drugmakers find out whether they qualify for an exemption. There also might be a lag since U.S. law prevents drugmakers from increasing the price of drugs faster than inflation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if you\u2019re doing updates to the plant you currently have? What if you\u2019re planning a facility? Do those count?\u201d Kesselheim said. \u201cIt\u2019s all very ambiguous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some patients may not notice additional price hikes at all, given how costly brand-name drugs already are in the U.S., said Arthur Caplan, the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can certainly predict that some patients will immediately feel price increases that will shock them on some of these drugs,\u201d Caplan said.<\/p>\n

Could insurers absorb the costs?<\/p>\n

Insurers and middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, could try to negotiate drugmakers or absorb some of the tariff-related costs, Caplan said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more likely, however, that they\u2019d pass it on to patients in the short term, potentially in the form of a larger copay, he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only patients with private insurance that should be worried about price hikes, Kesselheim said. Those who get their drugs covered through government health programs could also see price increases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government is the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the market, through Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, so it\u2019s really the government or government payers that are going to see the largest impact on price increases,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Will tariffs spur more U.S. drug manufacturing?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely, Kesselheim said. The decision to build a plant \u201cis a complicated and expensive one\u201d that requires several regulatory hurdles and years of planning.<\/p>\n

Conti noted that by the time new manufacturing plants<\/a> are completed, Trump would likely be out of office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is somewhere between two years and five years to get new production facilities built,\u201d she said, \u201cand it can be in the millions of dollars depending on whether the product that you\u2019re making is a small molecule drug or a biologic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even putting money back into an existing plant isn\u2019t quick.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to switch a line or retool a factory to make a product, then we\u2019re talking about somewhere between 18 to 36 months to do that,\u201d Conti said, \u201cbecause you have to show the U.S. regulator that you can make it at this factory at scale, and the product is what it says it is, or is high quality and meets the quality standards of the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Alex Schriver, a spokesperson for the trade group the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said \u201cmost innovative medicines prescribed in America are already made in America\u201d and companies continue to invest in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cTariffs risk those plans because every dollar spent on tariffs is a dollar that cannot be invested in American manufacturing or the development of future treatments and cures,\u201d Schriver said. \u201cMedicines have historically been exempt from tariffs because they raise costs and could lead to shortages.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about shortages?<\/p>\n

If Trump keeps his focus solely on brand-name drugs, U.S. patients are unlikely to face shortages<\/a>, Kesselheim said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir profits are just so, so far beyond this tariff cost that they could probably be OK or raise the prices of the drugs,\u201d he said. \u201cThey would probably not stop production as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that excludes, he added, some smaller companies who may make niche brand-name products and may not have the resources to take on the extra costs. If tariffs extend to generics, the risk is far greater, Caplan added. <\/p>\n

Unlike brand-name drugs, generic drugs are typically sold at close to the cost they\u2019re made, he said, which makes it difficult for companies to justify the cost of building a new facility. They\u2019d likely be forced to walk away from production or close their plants altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For people who rely on certain prescription drugs, including weight loss, asthma and cancer medications, President Donald Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":258709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-258708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115276264409286104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}