Trump says that pharmaceutical rates are arriving, the actions fall

The actions of drug manufacturers fell on Wednesday after President Donald Trump doubled the plans to impose tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products to the United States.

Actions of US companies Eli Lilly, Abbot, Bristol Myers Squibb and Regeneron All fell around 4% or more on Wednesday. Other American drug manufacturers Merck, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and Amgen It fell at least 2%. Meanwhile, companies abroad, including Astrazeneca and GSKMore than 4%fell.

Trump said Tuesday that his administration will announce an “important” tariff on “very briefly” pharmaceutical products, despite the market consequences of their global taxes, according to several reports. He exempt the pharmaceutical products from their large tariffs presented last week in temporary relief for drug manufacturers.

The president has said that tariffs will encourage pharmaceutical companies to transfer manufacturing operations to the United States, an effort that Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and others are already following. It occurs when the national manufacture of the pharmaceutical industry has been drastically reduced in recent decades, with key parts of the production process that move to China, India and other countries where labor costs and other costs are cheaper.

American imports of pharmaceutical products reached almost $ 213 billion in 2024, more than twice and a half in the total of a decade earlier, according to the United Nations database for international trade.

However, Wall Street analysts and companies have expressed concern that it will be difficult to restart production in the country, which will be expensive, could take several years and could interrupt the pharmaceutical supply chain and increase the costs of medicines for patients. Medication manufacturers trust a complex network of manufacturing sites, sometimes in different countries for different steps of the production process.

“Global supply chains are complex, with a pharmaceutical among the most, it is not as simple as moving where someone screws up small screws to make an iPhone,” said BMO BMO Analyst Capital Markets Evan Seigerman in a note on Wednesday.

He said that tariffs “will probably do little to change manufacturing” to the United States, since companies already have solid operations in the country.

Seigerman said he hopes that most of the large pharmaceutical companies will probably establish the objective of “waiting until the end of Trump's presidency to consider the most permanent manufacturing decisions.”

According to reports, a group of Democrats from the House of Representatives is also asking the administration to protect the medical supply chains of what they called the “devastating consequences” that the trade war could inflict American patients.

“The supply interruptions of critical medical products will inevitably damage US patients, suppliers will force impossible ration decisions and, potentially, they will even give rise to death as treatments are delayed, or the most effective medications and products are exchanged for less effective alternatives,” the legislators wrote in the letter, The Hill reported.

Some companies that have invested billions to boost the manufacture of the United States and build goodwill with Trump have delayed tariffs, warning about their potential impact on research and development in industry and patients.

“We cannot violate those agreements, so we have to eat the cost of tariffs and compete within our own companies,” said Eli Lilly Dave Ricks CEO to BBC in an interview, just over a month after the company announced $ 27 billion in a new national manufacturing.

“Usually, that will be in the reduction of personnel or research and development, and I predict that R&D will be the first. That is a disappointing result,” Ricks said.

J & J in March also announced a new investment of $ 55 billion in manufacturing, research and development and technology of the United States in the next four years. The company has not commented on rates.